"The Sticky Twig Man"

(The new chapter of Arnold Schnabel's Railroad Train to Heaven™, upon continued examination, has proven to be so epic that it is indeed not one but two chapters. As we work feverishly round-the-clock on our editorial "process", aiming now for an ironclad publication date for the first of these chapters no later than this coming Saturday morning, we throw the people a bone in the form of the following inspirational tale, first published here in slightly different form way back in 2007...)

The year was 1965, and for some time the young Simon Gratz High grads Patty and Rachel, sales assistants and apprentice bakers at Fink’s Bakery* on Spencer Street, had been experimenting with what they called “weed art”. They would wander through the abandoned lots and woods and construction sites of Olney with an Acme shopping cart and collect weeds and twigs and other odd bits of trash and detritus, and in the basement of the O’Donnel house on Sparks Street they began to create the masterpieces which would soon bring them fame and a certain amount of fortune.

After working in obscurity for a few months the girls decided to enter one of their favorite creations, “The Sticky Twig Man” (pictured above), at the annual Autumn Art Show at Sturgis Playground over at 65th and Second. Much to their delight they won third prize (a $50 gift certificate at the Mitzi Shoppe on 5th Street), and to their even greater surprise the very photo reproduced here was printed in the “Neighborhood Fun” section of the Evening Bulletin.

As it so happens the famed artist Andy Warhol and his entourage were in town that day for Andy’s first American museum exhibit at the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania.

Andy saw the newspaper photo of the girls and the “Sticky Twig Man” and pronounced it “really neat”. The “Factory” stalwart and Warhol right-hand man Gerard Malanga got on the case and tracked Patty and Rachel down. The girls agreed to meet Warhol at their favorite local stopping place The Three Babes diner on Fifth. Yes, it was a wild night at the Three Babes when Andy arrived with superstars Baby Jane Holzer, Edie Sedgwick, Candy Darling and the ubiquitous Malanga, along with the writers Terry Southern and George Plimpton, the actor Dennis Hopper and, not least of all, the gallery owner Janet Fleisher. Andy loved Patty and Rachel and immediately offered them parts in his next movie, but the girls declined as they didn’t think they would be able to get their shifts covered at the bakery. They passed around snapshots of their work and everyone seemed to be impressed, not least of all Miss Fleisher, who made them an offer on the spot to show their work at her world-famous gallery downtown on 17th Street.

Well, we all know what happened next. Helped out immeasurably by the imprimatur of Mr. Warhol, the Misses O’Donnel and Greenberg sold out their entire maiden show that December at the Fleisher, fetching as much as $5,000 a piece. Not bad at all for a couple of Olney gals who were still living at home and working at the bakery!

But this famous first show proved also to be their last. Patty and Rachel, in an interview with the Saturday Evening Post, said that they felt they had gone as far as they could with weeds and twigs, and that they wanted to quit while they were ahead.

Rachel took her money and put it down on a semi-detached on Acker Street, and shortly afterwards moved in with her new husband Dave, a mechanic at the Atlantic station down at Fifth and Somerville. Patty for her part bought a brand-new Thunderbird. Rachel continued to work at Fink’s until she and Dave had their first baby. Patty went to nursing school and worked for many years at Einstein Hospital on Old York Road.

Their most famous work, “The Sticky Twig Man”, was recently auctioned at Christie’s for $750,000.

*Arnold Schnabel mentions his habit of picking up some of Fink's famous cinnamon buns on the way home from his ushering duties at St. Helena's church (Railroad Train to Heaven, Vol. 26).

(Kindly refer to the far lower right-hand column of this page to find links to many other fantastic "Tales From the O-Zone".)

Communion

We promise that the next thrilling chapter of Railroad Train to Heaven will arrive sometime this week, but today was another hectic day at Casa de Leo, with all the electricity in the casa completely disappearing. We type these words in a cozy local coffee shop in the midst of what looks like many medical students earnestly studying. As a token of good faith, we here present again this classic Arnold Schnabel sonnet, originally published in the Olney Times for Dec. 7, 1962, a mere month or so before Arnold’s complete mental breakdown and subsequent hospitalization at the Pennsylvania State Mental Hospital at Byberry.

“Ushers' Communion Breakfast”

Today we had our communion breakfast,
All the ushers and their wives, or friends,
Or, in my case and that of some others
Who have neither wives nor friends, our mothers;
Afterwards, it’s once a year, so, reckless,
Our merry crew marches down Fifth, descends
On the Green Parrot and orders all ‘round
Cold pitchers of Schmidt’s and shots of Schenley’s,
Also some Manhattans for the ladies;
We stand at the bar and listen to the sound
Of our voices for once not hushed and grey,
As an usher’s should be, but loud and gay;
Drunkenly we tell each other bold lies;
Several of us even loosen our ties.

(Kindly look to the right hand side of this page for links to other fine Arnold Schnabel poems, as well as to the many dozens of installments of his immortal memoir, Railroad Train to Heaven™. All rights reserved, the Arnold Schnabel Society of Philadelphia. Nihil Obstat, Msgr. James “Jim” Kirk, SJ.)

Mrs. Malazewski, the sweet “Angel” of B Street

Mrs. Malazewski, tending her garden, June, 1963

Due to a rather extremely hectic week in the life of your humble amanuensis, our weekly episode of Railroad Train to Heaven must, alas, be delayed until next week, as we will foist upon the public no chapters of our hero's epic memoir which are less than fully-baked and relatively free of typos and egregious misspellings; but in the meanwhile, and by popular demand, here's a classic Tale from the O-Zone {Olney to the uninitiated}, first published here way back in June of 2007:

Everyone knew Mrs. Malazewski. A widow whose husband Stanley had worked as a tool grinder at the Heintz steel plant for many years, she lived alone in her small rowhome on B Street right across from the factory. (Right up the corner lived the famous poet-laureate of Olney, Arnold Schnabel, and his mother.) Her three children had grown and moved away, and she always had a happy word for the men coming to and from old Stan’s workplace. Often she would invite one or two of the boys to come in for a beer or two while she rolled pie dough with the enormous wooden roller her mother had brought over from Poland. (Mrs. Malazewski herself did not imbibe but she had always kept beer in the house for Stanley when he was alive and she continued to do so after he passed away at the age of forty-eight, the victim of a massive coronary perhaps hastened by his heavy diet of kielbasa and chops, Mrs. Malazewski’s homemade pies, and four quarts of Schmidt’s beer a day.) Soon it became a nightly event for quite a few of the guys to stop over at Mrs. Malazewski’s after work. Wanting only to cover expenses and to make a modest profit, Mrs. Malazewski regretfully had to begin to charge the boys for their beers and shots of Schenley’s whiskey, not to mention the hot brisket sandwiches and rhubarb pie with fresh whipped cream, but her prices still were half of what Pat asked over at his legal Tavern, not to mention the Green Parrot or the Huddle. (And her food was better than at any of those places!)

As business picked up, Mrs. Malazewski had her basement soundproofed, installed a jukebox and an ice machine down there, and even occasionally hosted informal jam sessions featuring off-duty musicians (such as Joe and Larry Schmidt, Missy McDonough, Ronnie Doyle, and Joe E. Donatello) from the nearby Schwarzwald Inn. Evenings were quiet and mellow affairs at Mrs. Malazewski’s but things always picked up after two AM when the legitimate bars closed. Guys from the Heintz plant who had worked the 6PM-to 2AM shift knew they had a nice nearby stopping place where they could drink and talk, play the new pinball machine Mrs. M had brought in, have a quiet game of 8-Ball on the billiard table that now stood where the dining room table used to be, and then stagger happily home before first light.

Everything went fine until that night in November of 1962 when Hank Titana got out of hand.

Hank was an enormous and boisterous stoker at the plant, loud and obnoxious and opinionated, and no one really liked him, not even his own wife and children, in fact especially not his wife and children. (Hank spent almost every cent he earned on booze and gambling, and it was his wife who kept the household running, taking in sewing and making dresses out of her house on Wentz Street.) Only a year before Hank had finished a three-year jolt in Holmesburg for assault-and-battery, and that hadn’t been the first time his penchant for violence had landed him behind bars, either. Hank when he drank tended to act a lot worse than he did sober which was already bad, and unfortunately he drank every day, a lot. Mrs. Malazewski had never had any time for Hank Titana and had banned him from her house many years before when he broke all four legs of her kitchen table one night during an argument about baseball with her late husband Stanley.

However, one fateful cold November evening, after the inevitable had happened and Hank had finally been flagged from every last bar in Olney, he begged Mrs. Malazewski on bended knee and with cap in hand to allow him the honor of patronizing her establishment. He tearfully explained that it was either Mrs. Malazewski’s or sitting in the woods with a bottle for poor him, because his wife wouldn’t let him drink in the house. Mrs. Malazewski listened to his pleading for a while and finally relented, but only after assuring him that he was being allowed in on a trial basis only.

Something happened that night. There was talk of a big fight at Mrs. Malazewski’s, and indeed a few of the guys came in to the plant the next day with black eyes. But one fellow who didn’t come in to the plant was the fearsome Hank Titana.

Hank had disappeared and no one knew where. The word spread that Hank, who was on still on parole for his last conviction, had skipped town after beating a few guys up, fearing to be sent back to the slammer for good as a three-time loser. When his wife finally reported his disappearance a few days later Detective Morris “Big Mo” Berg stopped by and had a little talk with Mrs. Malazewski. Over good hot Maxwell House coffee and warm rhubarb pie she told Big Mo that, yes, there had been a little conniption that night when Hank and a few other boys were visiting, but that she had thrown Hank out on his ear and his filthy old cap after him and told him never to darken her doorway again. Big Mo took a look around the little house, even went out into the tiny yard where Mrs. Malazewski grew hardy rhododenrons able to survive even amidst the harsh fumes constantly wafting down from the factory, and then he thanked Mrs M and left.

After that one unpleasant night it was business as usual at Mrs. Malazewski’s. (Once a month until the last of her four kids turned eighteen Mrs. Titana found an unstamped envelope with a hundred dollars in it slipped through her mail slot late at night; whether this allowance came from some local benefactor or benefactors, or even from the awful Hank Titana himself, trying finally to do right by his family, no one ever knew.)

In 1979 Mrs. Malazewski finally passed away quietly at home. The Heintz plant had closed some years before, and Mrs. Malazewski had eventually retired her speakeasy, although she was always ready to offer a cup of tea or a glass of beer to a neighbor or a passing policeman.

A nice young Korean couple bought the little house from Mrs. Malazewski’s children. The wife, Mrs. Oh, set immediately to work on the backyard garden, which had been sadly neglected since Mrs. Malazewski’s death several months before. Imagine Mrs. Oh’s surprise when, upon digging up the earth in order to lay fresh soil she found the decomposed remains of a big-boned man, his skull crushed. Next to the skeleton lay a large and severely dented rolling pin. Scientific examination proved that the dead man was none other than the long-missing Hank Titana, and that death had been caused by a blow to the head with the rolling pin, which in fact was Mrs. Malazewski’s, brought over by her mother from the old country in 1904.

Big Mo Berg, himself about to retire after thirty-five years on the force, declared the case finally closed.

(Kindly refer to the far lower right-hand side of this page to find links to other fabulous "Tales From the O-Zone".)

tales of the hotel st crispian: chapter 43

"Mortimer's theory"

by Horace P. Sternwall

edited by Dan Leo*

illustrated by rhoda penmarq

*Associate Professor of Classics and Ancient History; Assistant Volleyball Coach, Olney Community College; editor of Say Hi to All the Gang: Collected Letters of Horace P. Sternwall, Vol.4 (1946-1950); Olney Community College Press, “The Sternwall Papers”.

Mortimer knew that people looked down on him.

He knew people looked down on him because he was an elevator operator.

A forty-two-year-old elevator operator.

A forty-two-year-old elevator operator who lived with his mother in a third-floor walk-up apartment down at Bleecker and the Bowery.

But Mortimer didn’t care what people thought about him. He didn’t care because he loved his job and he loved his life.

What more could a guy ask for?

Who needed a wife, or a girl friend? Mortimer had his mom to do his laundry and darn his socks for him. Not that Mortimer had anything against dames, mind you. Wasn’t his own mother a dame? And Mortimer’s mother was a saint, bringing up her seven children all alone after Mortimer’s poor overworked dad dropped dead in the rendering vat at the hot dog factory...

(Click here to read the entire thrilling episode!)