Chess,1959: Dad & Uncle Glen Come To A Blow

 The boy watching the two men playing chess wasn't bored, though he should have been. The games these men played moved at snail's pace, and the play was mediocre. But the boy wasn't bored; his attention never wavered. The game wasn't the object. The men were the object; both figured prominently in the small world of the boy, who might have been 12, possibly 13, an age where sitting still for so long should have been excruciating. As he sat centered on the chessboard a couple feet back from the table, the player to his right was his father, a thick, large-boned man in his earliest thirties. To his left, was an adored uncle, his favorite uncle. Uncle Glen was of an age with the boy's father, if not the same, close enough. Both men were average height, an inch or two under 6 feet, but Uncle Glen was more compact, smaller-boned and less fleshy than his father, and carried himself lighter on his feet. The father, a Clydesdale. The Uncle an Arabian. The boy found both men interesting, even fascinating. He also loved them.

The boy was me.

Young boys are always, I think, on the hunt role models. I was no exception, but thoughts of finding traits to emulate or adopt from my male elders and even from my contemporaries hadn't entered my conscious mind. I just knew what I liked and what I didn't like; what I admired, and what I scorned in the men in my life. 

On this particular day, the small living room of apartment #12 at 239 Capitol Street was not uncomfortably warm, but I can't say, so many decades later, whether that was because the season was moderate, or because the sputtering steam radiators that heated our space in winter were properly tuned for the day. I want to think it was Spring, and that the weather was fine and mild. Whenever my Dad was in the room, the room could be called "smoke-filled." On this day, with both Dad and Uncle Glen chain-smoking, it was quite hazy. If it WAS Spring, the sash windows in the living room might have been open, but the movement of fresh air through them would have been no match in any case for the great clouds of blue smoke exhaled by the two, and the lazy trails of denser smoke drifting up from their cigarettes. My lungs, inured by long and constant exposure to the tainted air, took it in stride. But how I hated the stink of cigarettes! It oozed from everything in our apartment; our clothes, our skin, our hair, the walls, the furniture. Climbing into our family car was akin to rolling around in a giant ashtray, and inside surfaces of the windows were coated with the yellowish-blue residue of one of the worst habits ever invented by and for mankind. I marveled that people were willing to endure the stink, never mind the discomfort, but it was simply a fact of my life, and I accepted it. After all, most adults in the America of the 1950s seemed to have the habit. I still marvel, as an old man, that people are willing to smell so foul in the service of so disgusting and deadly a practice.

The particular game underway was more than likely not the first of the day, but one of a series in a marathon that started when Uncle Glen arrived with a case of Becker's beer. How much beer he brought on a given day was always a measure of how long he intended to stay on the occasion. There were exceptions, of course; the day might go uproariously fine, and require a resupply from "Gomer's" which was really Nicholas Grocery, just across Electric Alley and through the Star Noodle's parking lot, then a quick few steps west on 25th Street. The beer was only for Uncle Glen. I hardly ever saw my Dad touch the stuff. Maybe, simply for refreshment on a hot summer day, he might down one or two, but his beverage of choice was Seagram's 7, more accurately brand-named Seagram's Seven Crown. But everyone knew it as just Seagram's 7, which was the most prominent legend on the labels of the seemingly endless number of "fifths" that came into our spaces full and marched out empty in very short order.

I think it's safe to say that Seagram's 7 was, even then, "Der Whiskey der Leute", or The People's Whiskey, a Volkswhiskey, if you will. It was (probably still is) an inexpensive "American Whiskey Blend", then distilled by Joseph E. Seagram & Sons and later (around 2000) purchased by a consortium of companies that included Coca Cola. Wikipedia describes how this beverage of distinctive character was mixed into various cocktails, such as "7&7", which would have been Seagram's 7 and 7Up. But my Dad had neither the patience nor the disposition for such affectation. For him, even glasses were a foppish accessory that unnecessarily delayed the eye-watering burn of Seven Crown on its way to his circulatory system. In various holiday seasons, the odd decorative decanter sold in a velvet bag might find its way home, but our constant companion was the plain, cheap brown "fifth" (4/5 of a quart), an unadorned glass bottle with no distinctive shape or contour. But I digress. More on this paint-thinner later. However, it would not be possible to describe the chess marathon that burns so bright in my brain without at least some preamble describing the fuels that gave such moments their unique essence.

I had actually taught Dad the basic moves for chess at some point, having learned them myself from my older cousin, Larry Barty when I was very small (and he was very bored.) I later played sporadically during our time on John's Drive in Sunset, mostly with Michael Mayhew, who lived directly across the street from us. I never heard the word "nerd" as a child; it probably didn't exist. But Michael would be a nerd as a boy in today's world. I tried teaching the basic moves to other friends, but I don't remember any of them being much interested. Why would they be? We were outside in every possible moment, from sunup until bedtime, having adventures, exploring, playing, catching frogs and snakes. Who, at our age, especially in the 1950s, would want to sit  quietly shoving plastic things around a checkerboard? It was great fun teaching Dad the moves, and kicking his ass time after time. He never seemed unhappy at constantly losing, and he was always up for another game, even pleading with me to continue after I had beaten him in several games running. His attention was rapt. He puzzled over the board much longer than I wanted him to, making the games drag out excruciatingly. But I would always win, and he would never resign, but insisted on playing out to checkmate, even when his position had long since passed hopeless. So I beat him, and I beat him, and I beat him. Until one day I didn't. After his first victory, he won the majority of our games. I was able to eke out only the very occasional win. He beat me, and he beat me, and he beat me. The tables had turned forever. A curious trait that I've made peace with into old age was manifesting even then: I am not a naturally competitive person. I don't like to lose, but I am reluctant to spare the effort to assure that I win. I am also reluctant to beat someone I know. It always seemed impolite to me, and I did not revel in the victories, but felt bad for the vanquished. I took no joy from winning, and so the essence of a game with clear winners and losers was missing for me. (To this day, I prefer playing against computer opponents. Even chess. I usually set the difficulty level so that I rarely lose, and there's no need to feel sadness when I beat the software. I'm sure it's some sort of character flaw.)

So, Dad, having mastered the moves, and finding it increasingly difficult to coerce me into playing, turned on Uncle Glen, who seemed very willing. Once the rhythm was established, I believe they were fairly well matched. But it was never about the game. It was about their friendship, their common ground, and their positions in the hierarchy  of the Milligan family, from which happy household their brides both came. Here's a hint: I have heard it often from my Mother (always said in a jovial surround, with humor, and never accepted badly by my Dad) that it was the habit of the Milligan patriarch to refer to the ardent suitor of his youngest of five  daughters as "That God-damned plumber." Dad wasn't really a plumber, though he could plumb. His father, William Franklin Thompson had been a plumber, owning a plumbing business in the small mining town of Bingham Canyon, Utah, where he could sometimes be found at 495 & 1/2 Main Street, or reached at the telephone number of 315, for those few persons having such miracle devices in those days.

Dad, at the time of having this appellation first applied to him, was more properly a steamfitter. I'll leave readers to draw their own distinctions. One difference may have been that plumbers furnished estimates, and steamfitters probably didn't have any truck with such things. Dad really didn't have an official profession when he met my Mother. They were only 16. But he was probably pressed into the service of the W.F. Thompson Heating & Plumbing company whenever possible, as a helper or an apprentice of his father, and that was good enough for Mr. Milligan ("Pop" to me) to label him "That God-damned plumber." As WWII progressed and all the young men in America and around the world were swept into it, my Dad went into the U.S. Merchant Marine service working on Victory and Liberty ships transporting men, food, clothing, ammunition and the machines of murder and mayhem to remote places in the Pacific theater of that great world-wide convulsion, and Uncle Glen was swept into the U.S. Army, which I didn't know at the time of the chess games. But that's what it says on his grave marker, so it must be so. While Uncle Glen was learning to be a corporal in the army, Dad was learning to be a "steamfitter" aboard ships in the U.S. Merchant Fleet, with his buddy from Ogden, Ernie Strain, who at some point came to be referred to as "Dirty Ernie." Don't ask; I don't know, and there's no one left to ask. When the war ended, my Dad worked in a series of factory jobs in or near Ogden, tried a little silver mining in Pioche Nevada, and finally settled into being a steamfitter in whatever places employed such skilled tradesmen. Uncle Glen took a path of similarly little resistance and settled into working for the rest of what turned out to be a tragically short life working for the Union Pacific Railroad. Which eventually killed him in the most hideous way on a lonely stretch of track in the emptiest part of Wyoming, which is one of the emptiest states in the United States. I was in the Weber County jail at the time, on the 9th floor of the Ogden Municipal building, in the lower floors of which my fine grandfather, W.K. Milligan, had toiled for most of his life rising in the ranks of the Ogden Police Department. Thus indisposed, I was unable to attend the funeral of my most beloved and favorite Uncle Glen. But, once again as is my habit, I digress. 

The point of all these last words is to paint a picture of Dad and Uncle Glen as the black sheep of the Milligan Girl spouses, a label they both joyfully embraced and wore with pride all of their lives. Mom was more devoted to her mischievous rogue husband than Aunt Dorothy (hereinafter referred to as Dot (since that's what she was ever called) was to my dear Uncle Glen. This is just my perception. I could be completely wrong. Neither of these men, however, could be reformed from the behaviors that made them two black sheep in the group of the five husbands of the Milligan Girls. They weren't awful people; I thought of them as pagans, or heathens, though not in the religious sense. But they were the Bacchanalian boys, the perpetually adolescent practical jokers, the teasers, the smirkers, the mischief-makers, the Gusto Guys. I suppose that often leads to a great affection for the products of Joseph Seagram & Sons and, in Glen's case, John, Gustav and Albert Becker, or like products of other brands.

They were kindred spirits and this was amplified by their sometimes uncomfortable presence in the Milligan clan. So they spent a lot of time together, and became great friends as well as brothers-in-law. Both died young, but it can be safely argued that they both might have died on many other earlier occasions. First among such opportunities would have been their exposure to the grim scythe of the war, and they survived it. In their professions, people died or were maimed in greater percentages than in the accounting or legal professions. In one such incident, perhaps in 1955 or thereabouts, I heard my parents somberly discussing an accident in the steam plant at Hill Air Force Base, where several of Dad's co-workers had been cooked alive, as in a household pressure-cooker, when a high-pressure line carrying superheated steam burst, killing everyone on duty in the boiler room. There was no OSHA at the time, and unbelievably, the building had been constructed, probably expedient to the war effort, with all of the doors opening inward, so that the instantaneous explosion of pressure and heat sealed the room and their doom. Only the serendipity of scheduling spared my Dad and others who were off duty that day. And of course, Glen might have died in any number of incidents like the one than eventually killed him beneath the wheels of a rail car. Aside from hazardous professions, the two were party boys who routinely drove drunk and reckless, thereby causing several accidents, one of which was horrific enough to merit the display of my Dad's formerly beautiful 1956 Mercury Montclair hardtop in the lot of a body shop on U.S. Highway 91 at Riverdale Road collapsed accordion-style into a lump of mangled metal half its original length beneath a sign that said something like "Don't Drink and Drive!" People asked "How many died?" assuming the impossibility of anyone surviving it. But they did. Dad was bruised and battered, and his jaw had been shattered, forever changing his facial contours and spoiling what has been a beautiful countenance, and Uncle Glen was also bruised and battered, and had lost a few teeth, not in the impact itself, but from an ensuing collision of his face with the gravel road-bed when he stumbled out of the car and found it impossible to remain standing. Many months later, they would speak of it with perverse pride in their survival, smiling and laughing as they remembered. Initially, however, there was no laughter, no smiles; for Dad's jaw was immobilized in a hideous Frankenstein contraption called a "Streetor Splint" with anchor studs driven through his facial skin and screwed into the fragments of his jaw, then joined on the outside of his face by a framework of metal rods from ear to ear. And poor Glen had no front teeth. But, back to the chess game.

The tournament was nearly finished. After several hours of ponderous moves, punctuated by chin-stroking and head shaking, and the grudging acceptance of hearing "checkmate" triumphantly exclaimed from one side of the board or the other, maybe followed by a morose "Well, God Damn it" from the opposite side, I knew we were nearly done. The length of time between moves had, it seemed to me, lengthened to an absurd extent. The case of Becker's had dwindled to a six-pack or less, and a fifth of Seagram's 7 had nearly disappeared. Once or twice, I had presumed to accidentally nudge one or the other of the players when one or both had allowed their eyes to droop closed in thought, with chins resting on or near their chests. First one, then the other, during separate moments of such deep thought had allowed cigarettes to drop ashes or fall in their entirety onto shirt fronts and trousers, followed by frantic slapping at the new burn holes by the victim and gleeful chuckling by the lucky opponent. No matter; in a short time, the roles would be reversed. I confess, I was hoping strenuously that this would be the last game, and that someone would manage a checkmate very soon. Certainly they couldn't continue; the fuel was very nearly exhausted. I saw that the chins were down again, and that Dad was about to lose control of his cigarette again. I was bending down slightly, peering at their eyelids to see if the thinking was still underway when the cigarette my Dad was about to drop burned too close to his fingers, the glowing ashes scorching his skin. As I reached over to rouse him from his "thoughts", the hot pain registered, and his eyes popped open with the deliberate speed of a freight elevator inching its way to the destination floor…well, maybe "popped" isn't the right word. He flipped the attacking cigarette onto the floor, then realizing it would burn there too, stooped to pick it up and momentarily off balance and out of sorts, jostled the table, which caused Glens eyes to widen in slow-motion, as he too was roused from his "thinking." As Dad came back upright with the short cigarette recaptured, Uncle Glen registered his awkward movement, and said "Hey! Put that back, God damn it, Carty; you already moved. It's MY move." Dad said "I didn't move anything; besides, it's MY move, not yours, dumbass. You just moved your King's bishop!" Glen's eyes widened, and he said "Why you cheatin' bastard! Did you think you could get away with moving while I wasn't looking?" At which point, shockingly, Dad reached a meaty paw across the board and gave Glen a very slow-motion low-energy smack on one of his cheeks, saying "THERE, God damn it; call ME a cheater, that's what you get!" Glen didn't dodge the blow, which was really, for lack of Dad's motor control, more of a nudge than a slap. His own lack of coordination made that impossible. But he awkwardly got to his feet, and said something like "Well, THIS game is over, and by God, that's the last time I'll ever play with a cheater!" Dad, not to be outdone, said "I was winning anyway, and that was a cheap trick to get out of losing." Adrenalin having restored some cognition for both men, Glen said, "Jesus, Carty; you're too drunk to hang onto your cigarette, how did you think you were going to beat me?" The outrage was bleeding out of the incident rapidly, as the two began to realize how ridiculous they looked. Dad was smiling again when he said "ME!? Look at the smoking hole in your shirt! If I can't beat someone who burns up his own clothes, I guess I'd better quit." Now Glen laughed out loud, and pointed to the little black-rimmed pinholes in Dad's pants and said "HA! Liar, liar…your pants are on fire!" They were both laughing now, hard enough to bring tears to their eyes, as Glen said "Sheez…I'm about to piss my pants. I gotta take a leak", and headed forthwith out the door to one of the hallway bathrooms shared by the six apartments on the second floor. Dad began cleaning up the chess pieces and the and the refreshment mess, and when Glen came back into the apartment, the day rapidly came to a close, with my Uncle Glen hugging Dad, and Dad hugging Uncle Glen, and me, having been massively entertained toward the end of a stultifyingly sluggish series of chess games smiling ear to ear at all the sunny goodwill in the room, happy that the face-slapping and clothes-burning had come to an agreeable ending. And I desperately needed to go outside for some fresh air.