Hank Scorpio wrote:
My other grandfather was the crazy one. Very bad alcoholic. He quit when I was born so I never really saw it but he would tell stories. He went out one night and ended up on a bender and the next thing he knew, it was two days later and he was being woken up by a stewardess on a plane in San Francisco. He loved to tell the joke about the blind man walking past the fish house. Every hot chick that they would show in Wrigley during Cubs games was his ex girlfriend. ‘Don’t tell your grandma!!’ And then he would laugh at the joke like I never heard it.
This sounds somewhat similar to my own grandfather. He and his Irish buddy, Pete Kelly, used to raise hell all over Lakeview. In the 30s when Hitler was rising in Germany, there was a segment of Germans in Chicago who supported him. There was a bar near Addison and Ashland where the Nazis would hang out. At the time, "Nazi" obviously didn't have the same weight or connotation that it would several years later during and after WWII, but my grandfather still found it foreign and subversive. I suppose he saw such activity as sullying his own German name and somehow making him seem less than American.
He and Pete Kelly decided to go into the Nazi bar separately and sit at opposite ends. When they gave each other the high sign they would then flip the bar- which was not secured to the floor- upside down. Well, the two drunks did exactly that and all hell broke loose. My grandfather ended up having his skull split open with a blackjack. He staggered home with his head bleeding profusely. My grandmother was appalled and insisted they go immediately to the hospital. My grandfather sneered at her, "Put a towel on it."
Even after he stopped drinking, which was before I can remember, he was a tough guy to take. He could be very obnoxious at his worst and pretty damn funny at his best. He's the only 80 year old man I ever met as an adult who I was sure could beat the fuck out of me.
