Vodka On My Wheaties

Prologue

It had become a recurring dream, almost too vivid, colors intensely bright for reality. I was walking alongside a lake, with a smattering of tiny dwellings, and no inhabitants. The scene continued to haunt me for years. Yes, I have lived on a petite island, but this was to be totally different.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my deceased friend, Jessie, who thought that my life was worth saving, along with my dear friend, Gloria, who encouraged me to have my story published.

And to my three wonderful children who have been so loving and kind. Thank you for producing, for an only child like myself, nine grandchildren and seven great grandchildren, for me to enjoy now in my later years.

A Special Thank You

To my daughter, Maria Lloyd, who worked so diligently to produce this magnificent photographic design for the cover of my book.

Table of Contents

Prologue/Dedication/A Special Thank You:

Table of Contents:

Celebrity Index:

Introduction:

Chapters

1. Eating Oleo While the Russians Oiled Their Boots with My Butter

2. First Love Smothered in Suds

3. Wedlock Is Not Deadlock, or Is It?

4. This Brothel Ain't No Chicken Soup

5. The Unhoneymoon Continues: New Age Prayer Rugs

6. Smoking Within Closed Visors May Be Hazardous to Your Health

7. The Darker Side

8. Duel with a Dual Personality

9. From the Fire Back Into the Frying Pan

10. Very British Hostage, or Was It the Reverse?

11. Like the Duck, I Became a Rabbit for the Second Time

12. God-damn It, Sister, Get This Show on the Road!

13. Tick Tock of Oz, G-string Under the Microscope and Many Others

14. Turning Climbing Stalls, Look Ma, No Hands

15. Christmas Lights Always Turned Me On

16 The Saline Solution to Our Insatiable Cravings

17. Guitar Music the Old-fashioned Way

18. Suspended in Such Clear Water Can Create Fear of Heights

19. Adopted By a Prehensile Tail

20. Just Another Bucking Tourist

21. The Magic Pill

22. Cool Mom Buys a Lemon

23. Enter James Franciscus: A Charming Virus in His Own Time

24. Repossessing the Skeletons: The Legend in His Own Time

25. Keep Your Zipper Up, Buddy!

26. Valium Strikes Again

27. Saved By a Raspberry

28. Just Call Me Max

29. Gift of a Cadaver

30. Recipe for De-mechanizing

31. Pa, Let's Make a Mummy

32. Creating Another Frankenstein's Monster

33. I Fix, I Give Tune-up

34. Mentally, Physically, and Spiritually Bankrupt

35. Tailor-made by Angels

36. A Dead Parent Responds

37. The Time Is Now!

38. A Time Bomb in My Chest

39. IVs in the Church Parking Lot

40. Goodbye, Real World

41. The Rectangular Bubble

42. Carrying the Message

43. The Divineness of It All

Epilogue: As We Are Now

Celebrity Index

Aken, Sir Max

Beaverbrook, Lord

Beatles, The

Bridges, Lloyd

Burchfield, Charles

Burr, Raymond

Carstairs, Jo

Dali, Salvador

Epstein, Brian

Fisher, Mel

Franciscus, James

Fuldheim, Dorothy

Greenberg, Hank

Heston, Charlton

Holbrook, Hal

Ives, Burl

Jenkins, Paul

Kerr, Graham

Koussevitzky, Serge

Langtry, Lillie

Laughton, Charles

Leinsdorf, Eric

Lichtenstein, Roy & Isobel

Lugosi, Bela

Merrill, Dina

Ness, Elliot

Pindling, Lyndon 0.

Power, Tyrone

Robertson, Cliff

Spock, Doctor

Symonette, Sir Roland

Tone, Franchot

Zell, George

Introduction

Vodka On My Wheaties was written during my confinement, at sixty-two, in my Rectangular Bubble, an all porcelain-lined trailer, due to a strange immune system disorder which rendered me unable to function in the Areal world.@ Directed by a doctor to a remote colony of twenty-four people all trying to survive and heal away from the every day toxins of modern society, I remained there for ten years.

My memoir is a humorous potpourri of real life happenings for a wide range of people to enjoy. I, an eccentric Auntie Mame type, was the only child of neurotic parents. I continued on through sixty-six years of not following the herd. Encounters with celebrities, collecting the art of Salvador Dali, and amazing serendipitous adventures, as well as narrowly escaping being murdered at twenty-one years old by my first husband B a prominent drug store magnate twice my age B have filled my life with strange and exciting stories ready to be told.

After being widowed, and still a well-known Cleveland socialite, I continued my journey with world travel escapades. In the early 1950=s my second husband and I, disillusioned with the decadent social scene, ventured out and discovered the tiny, rarely traveled ALost Island of the Caribbean.@ Within six months we had completely packed up, with our three young children, leaving the old life and friends behind in Ohio, to pioneer a completely new world in the Bahamas. The scuba diving resort that we built and managed for fifteen years became quite well known. The three-hundred-year-old quaint all white settlement of eight hundred people in Spanish Wells charmed our guests. It was as if the clock had been turned back one hundred years.

Widowed a second time after my husband=s fatal plane crash my children and I moved to Florida. Here the saga continued with the third husband, the purchase of a new tavern business, and bouts with substance abuse. After six years of sobriety, thanks to a Twelve Step program, I had a complete personality change which enabled me to face a bizarre illness with a positive approach towards healing. This was not the end of my life but a new beginning from which I gained much knowledge about myself, and finally the spiritual growth to continue with a happy and peaceful life. Through those years of recovering with my intuition more finely tuned, I have recorded even more intense observations and amazing insights during encounters with unusual humans and animals.

A bound manuscript of AVodka On My Wheaties@ is located in the archives of the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Chapter 1

Eating Oleo While the Russians Oiled Their Boots with My Butter

I thought I was the toast of Cleveland, marrying one of its richest and most eligible bachelors; I was only eighteen years old, and he was twice my age at thirty-six. In 1948, our relationship might have been considered quite bizarre had the way not been paved by the Humphrey Bogart-Lauren Bacall romance.

But, let=s start at the beginning. As an only child born into an adult world, the only childhood I would ever experience would be recaptured later through the eyes of my own three children.

My father was an eccentric but fascinating university professor, obsessed with art collecting. My mother, famous for her exotic beauty in younger years, was a frustrated artist-housewife who finally succumbed to alcoholism after thirty years of catering to the whims of the perfectionism of her husband. Life was not dull in our household, only confusing!

Father was the fourth son of a self-made, wealthy Danish immigrant who came to this country at the age of eight, harboring the coveted secret to the manufacturing of the Bentwood chair. Grandfather advanced to foreman at age twelve in a furniture factory and by his mid-twenties owned the entire plant, having built up the chair business to be worth over a million dollars. The successful, aristocratic Dane, rumored to be of royal blood, then married the local banker=s daughter which in those days was about as high as one could go in a small town like Sheboygan. Therefore, when Father, a very studious man, decided to further his education with a Ph.D. from the University of Heidelberg, the funds, along with a modest allowance, were readily available. His best friend, traveling companion, and roommate, was John Kohler of the famous Kohler Plumbing monarchy, which also arose from this small town.

After six months of pining in Europe for his childhood sweetheart, my father cabled my mother, the daughter of a struggling haberdasher, to cross the Atlantic to become his bride. Sadly, he discovered upon her arrival from Wisconsin in 1926, that two American citizens could not be married on European soil. The problem was solved by boarding the SS George Washington in Hamburg to sail on a short trip into international waters. Thus, they became the last American couple allowed to be legally married at sea by a ship=s captain. Publicity with much to-do was made over this state-side. There were even photos of the honeymooning pair in the newspapers and on billboards. My parents lived in Heidelberg for four years until Father received his doctorate of Philosophy. During this period, Mother became interested in Egyptology and attended her first lecture by the well-known Egyptologist, Herman Ranke. He had recently uncovered and smuggled the famous head of ANefertete@ out of Egypt into Berlin (note: Nefertete, German spelling). That performance had cost the Germans their rights to ever excavate in Egypt again. Upon entering the auditorium, Mother became aware of a strikingly distinguished man in his forties. His skin reflected the copperish colored desert sands, permanently baked in by the African sun that contrasted fiercely with his deep lapis blue eyes, which were now focused directly on her. There was an embarrassingly dead silence! Then Doctor Ranke dismissed the students and announced that the lecture would be continued the next day. Stepping down from the podium, the professor stroked his pure white beard, which was cut off in the square Coptic style of the ancient Pharaohs. He turned his full attention toward Mother as she stood quaking in her boots, not knowing what she had done to cause such a furor. Her dark exotic beauty attracted him like the opposite side of a magnet. The distinguished lecturer began to rave, AMein Gott, Fraulein, you are die spitten image of the Queen of the Nile. I am vitnessing an apparition or perhaps her reincarnation in my own lifetime.@ He continued on deliriously with an unbelieving look of amazement in his gem-like eyes. Yes, Mother was the exact double of the ancient Egyptian Queen Nefertete, and who would know better than the discoverer of the treasured bust that then graced the Berlin Museum!

The upshot of this was Mother, quite brilliant in her own right, assisted the professor in publishing two large tomes on hieroglyphics. The Rankes and my parents became good friends though the archeologist and his wife were twice their age. The professor, along with Father, designed and had made for Mother, a stylized fez. Mother not only wore it, but became well known for her resemblance to Nefertete. Even the famous aging songstress Lillie Langtry, all veiled in black, requested and was of course granted, a full viewing of Mother.

After four years of residing out of the country, my father=s studies were completed with honors. Their planned extended stay was cut short because of Mother=s pregnancy. My parents boarded a North German Lloyd Liner and returned to the United States. Due to their lengthy abode overseas, it was necessary to clear a complicated customs procedure. They were the last passengers to disembark. Just as Mother and Dad stepped off the gangway, a tremendous explosion rocked the ship; they turned around to see their ocean liner rapidly sinking in Boston Harbor. The boilers of the ship had exploded. Much of the cargo consisted of beautiful, yellow canaries so thousands of tiny, frightened birds were now bobbing and floating in the murky waters. One month later I was delivered in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, by a homeopathic doctor who slapped my behind and exclaimed, AMade in Germany!@

At the end of 1930, my father accepted a position with Western Reserve University as a German instructor. Born earlier that same year, I was spared the meaning of the Crash of >29 and the resulting Depression which wreaked devastation and poverty upon so many people. The occurrences going on around me seemed perfectly normal, as at the ages of three and four years I knew no other lifestyle. My father was lucky that his meagerly paying job as a university instructor was to continue.

In later years, I learned that my parents lost all of their money when the banks suddenly failed. Grandfather had to wire funds for food until Father received his next paycheck. At that time, we rented a small, wooden home located outside of the city of Cleveland in an underdeveloped housing project for the so-called working class. It was heaven for me with adjoining vacant lots interwoven with untamed terrains for continuous exploring. Wild strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, just ripe for the picking, sent me home with a pail full of fruit everyday during the summer. The freedom of gathering violets, forget-me-nots, and rambling roses still thrills me as I recall those early years. I continue to roam about in the wild searching for those early, colorful experiences.

After dinner, as a big treat, Father would drive me to a wonderful ice cream parlor where he often bought me a cone for a nickel. Father propped me up at the counter to enjoy my vanilla sugar cone while he met with friends in the backroom of the store. There was nothing to be afraid of, being alone, as I knew everyone in the place. Soon, Father returned. Now that I am older, I put two and two together: regardless that Prohibition was enforced then; homemade suds were still being served illegally in the backroom. At three years of age, I was, of course, totally unaware of such doings. In those hard times, only the very rich could afford bathtub gin or fancy speakeasy tabs. However, it was legal to brew a limited amount of beer at home for personal use only.

Before winter came, Mother worked at night for months to make me a warm coat with pieces of wool cloth from her scrap bag. She only had a hand-operated sewing machine the size of a two-slice toaster. How she ever made this thick garment on that doll-sized machine still amazes me. It turned out to be a beautiful purple and gray wool coat with a capelet and even an attached scarf. I was very proud of my new winter outfit.

When I was outside playing, I would often rap on the back door hungry, and Mother, busy cooking, would stop to make me a brown sugar and butter sandwich. Oh, how I did love those snacks. Every now and then, men young or old, looking very disheveled with their toes sticking out of their shoes, would also knock on our back door. Mother had no work or money available, but she always invited them in to eat at our kitchen table. She warmed up wonderful leftover meals which the poor, starving humans gobbled up slurping as noisily as our dog. Mother then found shoes, old clothes or whatever and sent the men on their way with a package of sandwiches. In those days, no one was afraid of being robbed or murdered. We were able to help one another without fear. We even shared with strangers!

I was plucked from my country paradise in Garfield Heights to spend my formative years in a relatively academic atmosphere in Cleveland, not far from the campus. Father remained at Western Reserve for over thirty years and was retired emeritus.

My father had three distinct personalities: one, a dignified but good-humored teacher image, maintained for the college classroom; two, a perfectionist and disciplinarian who lived strictly by the bell; and three, a mischievous beer-drinking boy. These character traits were always kept entirely separate, never merged or balanced, so I grew up in an atmosphere of either black or white, with no shades of gray. I believe this lifestyle eventually took its toll on Mother, but I was more cunning and learned to deal with it. When I saw the beer being opened I knew I could do and say more than at other times. I went along with the fun and really had an unhealthy worship of my father in believing that he could do no wrong. I now know that I began to mimic his behavior at a young age and later in life had the same workaholic syndrome with alcohol as my only reward. I did not know of any other means by which to unwind as I had been programmed to this way of life at home for eighteen years. My father, however, never became a non-functioning alcoholic as I did in later life.

I can remember, at a young age, one very memorable Christmas Eve. Mother was out early in the evening, delivering food baskets from the church for the needy, while Dad and I anxiously awaited her return. We celebrated our holiday in the German custom of opening one=s presents Christmas Eve. Since it was school vacation time, Dad was lifting a few when we decided to play a joke on Mother by adorning the entire tree with her most intimate wearing apparel. This grand feat completed, we departed to the local Italian grocery to purchase a ten pound pepperoni sausage and a large Provolone cheese. I was in luck, as more often than not, it was smoked eel bought in advance from the west side German delicatessen.

Upon arriving home about an hour later, Mother greeted Dad at the front door all smiles with the tree still standing in all its glory garbed in garter belts, bras, girdles and wispy panties. Mother sweetly informed us, AYou know, I never thought to take my house key as I assumed you would be home when I returned, but I was in luck as Davis kindly crawled through the dining room window and opened the door for me.@ Oh, oh, Davis Todd, who lived next door, was a very serious student of Dad=s, and unfortunately the window was right next to the Christmas tree. So, in this event, the joke having wreaked its havoc on Dad, East did meet West!

Our old-fashioned German Christmas tree was an illustration from a fairy tale book come to life. Wonderful lebkuchens (gingerbread cookies) in the shape of St. Nicholas with his long, red-robed image pasted on them were fastened to the bows with green ribbons. Tiny, sparkly colored hand-blown glass ornaments hung by threads. Pieces of marzipan candies in small shapes of animals, fruits, and vegetables were strung at random with springing icicles and candy canes profusely dangling from the limbs. Last of all, there were small metal holders clutching thin-tapered beeswax candles clamped onto the prickly narrow branches. The room was darkened, the candles were lit, and BEHOLD! There was the traditional tree, smelling of pine, ginger and peppermint, in all of its splendor!

This display lasted for about two or three minutes, of course, because it was a serious fire hazard. God, how I envied the kids in the neighborhood with the cheap strings of colored lights, and shiny dime-store red, blue and green balls with glistening silver tinsel entangled in the thick garlands roped all about the entire tree. What fun to wait until morning to find a stocking full of presents by the fireplace. It was not until I had children of my own that I really appreciated the foreign Christmases of my early childhood and then I incorporated a bit of both worlds for them. Our trees had everything but the kitchen sink hanging from the limbs. They were loaded with candies, cookies, colored lights, balls, imported ornaments and too much tinsel. In addition, we always opened one present each on Christmas Eve and saved the rest for Santa Claus.

Mother was known for her artistic abilities and her continental cuisine. While she obviously had not wanted a child, she never abused me. It was not in her nature to be a warm and loving person, thus I was well cared for, but I was very spoiled by my father who compensated for her underlying emotions. I did not learn how to really love people (although it came easily with animals) until a Twelve Step Program, introduced to me in later years, defined what it was all about. I was a very frail child, constantly sick during the winter months, with various childhood diseases. These bilious attacks lasted for periods of five days, and I had many symptoms of an undiagnosed nature. This enabled me to have my mother=s undivided attention at these times and only then. Perhaps this all was a forerunner of the bizarre illness from which I now suffer, but that comes later in the book.

Both of my parents were intense and neurotic, so much so that we never had a dog that did not try constantly to run away from home. I thought all dogs ran away until I had my own pets and found that if they were well cared for, loved, and in a stable environment, the animals remained loyal and home-abiding.

Father coveted unusually beautiful things, animate or inanimate as the case may be. Rare and unusual breeds of dogs and cats were an early phase of this, thus my young childhood memories reflect on such scenes as the police running through our neighborhood with gigantic nets, hunting for the bear that terrorized the nearby residents. This turned out to be our huge, black masked, apricot colored, Afghan hound, Anubus, named after the Egyptian God. Anubus had made his first prison break after ten days in my parents= home. Back in 1937, very few people had ever seen this breed of dog except at the American Kennel Club shows. The extremely nervous animal had terrible fits of trembling, poor coordination and could follow no commands even after he attended obedience school at night with Dad. So after six months of misery on all our parts, Anubus was given to an ex-student. One year later, I opened our Sunday Cleveland Plain Dealer, which I was not allowed to touch until Father arose to claim those sections of the newspaper most vital to him. There, featured in full color, on the cover of the Photogravure section was AChampion Anubus.@ He had won the National Obedience Championship for the entire United States!

Interesting projects continued at home, such as: a room full of aquariums in which the black guppy was originated, a special case for raising rare orchids, and the breeding of Burmese and Siamese cats, parakeets, and Mynah birds. A Bedlington Terrier, a couple of Pekingese, and a rare Afenpinscher, the only other two in the country belonged to Evelyn Walsh McLean of Hope Diamond fame, filtered through the household. The final and only lasting pet, an African Grey Parrot named Umby, lived to be twenty years old. Umby reigned, king of his street castle, all summer long on an outside perch answering the loud calls of fruit vendors, junk men, knife sharpeners, and door-to-door peddlers in the perfect human voice of my father, AOver here,@ AI want some,@ ACome in,@ and so on until the irate hawkers pounded loudly in frustration on our front door to try to locate the voice that continued to cajole them.

Over five thousand books, stamps mounted beautifully in albums, wristwatches, semi-precious gems, paper weights, musical instruments, plus various objets d=art, including antiques, were collected over the years. Simultaneously, along with the changing hobbies, the avid art collecting of paintings would continue until my father=s death. Please note that the collectibles, as well as the animals, were not mine to play with or touch, only to admire at a distance. Of course, many years later I would inherit all of the dust collectors so named by my mother and dubbed eye candy by Father. Although she loved beautiful things, Mother was tired of polishing and cleaning them over the years. I was programmed for the privilege of owning such possessions and vicariously looked forward to actually handling the forbidden treasures of my childhood. As fate would have it however, I was not destined to be the keeper of the eye candy collection for long, because of a bizarre event, which would change my whole lifestyle in later years.

Let me describe a typical family argument. Please note all fighting was of an unusual nature. We had house guests (relatives) who were interfering with Father=s number-two personality: perfectionism and punctuality. Mother was about to announce dinner to everyone, having put the last serving dish on the table. But she evidently didn=t smile out of the right side of her face, because Dad picked up the bowl, which was full of his favorite warm German potato salad with onion and bacon bits, and emptied the entire contents over the top of mother=s newly done coiffure. This was turning out like a Three Stooges movie, though it was not funny living it, so while the shiny moist clumps of potatoes slipped from her hair like the large blossoms of a rare wax begonia, I dove under the dining room table (note; a fine Hepplewhite antique). Next, I heard my mother laughing hysterically. That was all there was to it. End of fight! Life was not dull at home, only precarious. Now as I look back on my father=s actions, I realize this was a precursor to events to come as about six years later he informed Mother that he hated her upswept coif, which looked like turds neatly piled in rows. Her revenge was to never comb her hair properly for the next twenty years. But wasn=t that alright? I had heard the story of their first Thanksgiving turkey dinner.

Mr. Perfectionist had purchased a book on the art of carving meats and fowl (which was opened to a step-by-step diagram of the latter) and you can be sure that these instructions would be followed to the letter of the law. Of course, the turkey sat there getting cold as did the rest of the meal as he painfully put each step into practice at the dining room table (note; then an Early American Sears Roebuck). Mother, who had slaved over a hot stove all morning to please Mr. Stomach B yes, eating was another hobby B finally, in desperation she started to laugh. That was it, book closed with a snap.

AJosephine, I will never carve any meat at any table as long as I live!@ Hepplewhite table or not, he kept his vow, so why shouldn=t she keep hers? Mother had been at the top of his collection of beautiful objects, so later she would get her revenge by slowly destroying her image.

My childhood was a lonely one. Having been in an adult world so long, I did not identify with children of my own age. So, my life at home was centered around my parents= pendulous mood swings. In this case, it was exciting, as Father paraded Mother around in the local cocktail bar. She looked like a knock-out wearing the expensive new hat Father had just purchased from the neighboring French milliner. I, of course, feeling resentful at being left out, was home with an exchange student who spoke only German. In later life Mother shared with me the fact that Dad had never bought her a hat that she really wanted, just what suited him for her to wear. Father had excellent taste, but I also understood Mother=s feelings, too.

Mother gave up painting as my father always had plenty of his own ideas for her to put on canvas. Since the walls were becoming covered with local and nationally established artists, space was scarce. She felt she could not compete and turned to sculpting, which held no interest for him. Mother=s pieces were well executed and received recognition throughout the years in the Cleveland Museum=s May Show exhibit for local artists.

It may seem strange that though I was a very feminine child, I had no interest in dolls at all, playing instead with stuffed creatures by the hour. As a result, I have always had a great love for live animals. To this day I am not very touched at the sight of a human baby, but my father was so entranced with tiny people that he would run across the street to the carriages to view their bonneted faces. Of course, I loved my three children, but had a nanny to care for them until they were about two years old. It was around that age that they started to become wonderful, determined little personalities. We became inseparable as I took them to puppet shows, plays, children=s movies, and Easter egg hunts, to recapture my missing childhood through their eyes.

At about five years of age, I remember helping myself to one fresh string bean from the local Italian grocer=s vegetable bin. Upon arriving home, my mother found it in my pinafore pocket. She marched me right back to the store to present it and apologize to the jovial owner who readily forgave me. I grew up to be almost too strict in matters of this nature, but I will always be grateful to my mother for that lesson in honesty.

When I was rebellious or disobeyed, I was not only spanked but locked in the living room coat closet. It seemed like an eternity in the darkness not knowing if it was minutes or hours. This experience was the beginning of my fear of the dark. For many years, including part of my early adulthood, I slept with a soft night light on.

When I was considerably older, I asked my father about this punishment. He insisted that the closet treatment did not in any way dampen my spirits. He laughed and told me that one time upon his opening the closet door, I poked my head out and exclaimed vehemently, AYou dummy, you,@ stomping my foot rebelliously.

At about the age of five I yelled loudly from the bathtub, AWhy am I alive?!@ and Father decided that it was time for all of us to attend church after such a profound question on my part. Of course, it was not the usual Episcopal church of his childhood, but a most unique, one-of-a-kind, Anglican Catholic branch of the Episcopal diocese located in Cleveland. Saint James Church was in a very poor neighborhood with a house of ill-repute right across the street. The edifice was small, seating about one hundred people. The priest was into old colorful rituals and ceremonies, not practiced since about the time of Henry VIII. It was so Ahigh@ a church that often Roman Catholics wandered in to go to Confession, attend Mass, and receive Holy Communion, not even aware of the differences. The celebration was in English, but the rapid sing-song made most words inaudible. It followed their missal to a tee. When we arrived to attend early morning Mass, the good ladies of the evening still dressed in all of their fineries from the night before, leaned out of the windows and usually waved cordially to us.

I was soon enrolled in Sunday School and both parents became very active in church activities. Dad was a Vestry man, Mother in the Ladies Guild. I have many fond memories of wonderful church breakfasts after Easter Mass. We had lemoned tomato juice, buttered hot cross buns and crisp bacon, most of which was served by my mother and her fellow helpers. She painted Easter eggs with charming faces, then dressed them in sophisticated silk-velvet hats and flowered headgear. It took Mother months to create them. These very popular fancy Easter eggs were sold to make money to purchase new vestments for the priests. Our church was very democratic. There were as many neighborhood members as there were the so-called intellectual historians. Everyone got along famously. I always remembered my father=s words, so often spoken: AIt=s not your IQ that counts, it=s your HQ.@ HQ stood for Heart Quotient.

We had a magnificent pipe organ for such a small church. Our organist was also the Curator of Music at the Cleveland Museum of Art. People were attracted from afar to hear our talented choir, accompanied by the gloriously piped sounds dipped in the fragrance of incense, as three priests donned in richly brocaded vestments chanted softly. The entire scene, merged with the sunlight=s mystical, penetrating effects through the huge dark-colored stained glass windows created a consecrated celebration of indescribable euphoria. The polychromed, five-foot statue of the Virgin, along with stiff alabaster half-life-sized saints standing wearily in dim alcoves, seemed to exude an inner glow from the reflections of the flickering red and blue votive lights. This scene made a profound impression on me. At about the age of seven, I erected an altar on a small table in my room with a wooden cross, old scraps of velvet, silk flowers, a rosary and two colored votive lights for my daily ritual of praying and lighting candles.

At the beginning of World War II, my father took Mother and me to the local movies. In those pre-TV days the newsreel of the world was a must on the menu. Tonight was to be a turning point in our lives as the impressive figure of the Pope, in living black and white, garbed in all of his finery, hands raised, blessed the Italian tanks parading past. Father stood up in fury, yelling, AHow can a man of God bless machines of killing and destruction! I will never set foot in a church again.@ Sure enough he kept his vow except when I was married in St. James, the church of my childhood. Our church going soon stopped. We no longer attended as a family although my mother carried on her parish work for another year. After she became an inspector in a defense plant in the War effort, she no longer had the energy to continue working in the parish.

During our church-attending years, my parents became good friends with a doctor and his wife, who had a maladjusted only child, about a year older than I. Somehow the two of us bumbled through a friendship that lasted on and off for a lifetime. At the age of seven and eight, Barb and I were already interested in movie stars, picture shows, and movie magazines. Never mind personality, as long as we were sultry, sexy and glamorous. We lived in a fantasy world, Hollywood style, concocting fabulous dress-ups from old curtains, shawls, shoes, and dresses discarded by our mothers. Barb spent her time puffing and strutting in front of the mirror with her mother=s long cigarette holder, shades of Mata Hari. The upshot was she became an avid smoker. I spent my time trying on my mother=s bras; of course, she was not at home at the time. This, however, did not increase my breast size or cleavage and I was to spend more than half of my life wearing falsies. At least I never smoked as Barb did! We both thought it to be the epitome of sophistication to slap a boy=s face should he make the slightest advances toward one of us. After all, they did it on the silver screen. As I became of dating age I had picked up another cute stunt from the flicks B that of dumping a drink over a guy=s head if he in any way displeased me B but it wasn=t long before I discovered boys in my own age group were all hands, so I was soon to move on to men about five years my senior who were not at that experimental age! However, I found drink-dumping and face slapping no longer worked on the more mature male. But first let=s go back a bit.

Upon entering elementary school I found that I did not look like the other children. My hair was in long braids twined around my head in Marguerite fashion. My skirts were dirndls made of quaint German cloth by Mother and I wore fluffy cotton peasant blouses and Bavarian jackets. Of course, there were the knee socks when everyone else wore anklets. I looked like something out of Heidi all embroidered in edelweiss. During Dad=s German Fests he would don knee-length lederhosen with a perky feather in his felt hat and Mother dressed comparably in the female role as they played strong catchy foreign duets on their piano accordions. The jovial students and other adults all thought I was the perfect little madchen for a German prof=s daughter. The effect was so complete in the spring of 1935, when Dad, who had received the highest grades ever achieved by a foreign student, was invited back by the University of Heidelberg to speak before the graduating class.

While dining in a restaurant in Berlin, Herr Himmler, sitting at the table next to us pointed towards me and declared auf Deutsch, AShe is the perfect example of an Arian child.@

My father however, informed him that I was Amerikanisch, and thus I was definitely considered a curiosity by my peers at school. I think you can all glean the unhappy side of this, but let me share with you the positive effects on my life. I always made an effort throughout my lifetime to be kind to the other so-called misfits or squares as they were called then, and putting HQ (Heart Quotient) into effect, I found that many of us who did not run with the pack had much more to offer. While developing in later years my own style of dressing, which was not only acceptable by my peers but admired, I was not afraid to attempt the unusual in many other aspects. As this book progresses you will understand how well I accomplished that.

The Second World War years were very unhappy for me. From the age of ten, I was persecuted by the neighborhood children, especially young boys who followed me to and from school pelting me with snowballs or stones, calling me a Nazi because my father taught German and subscribed to a local German newspaper. Once I lashed out at them with my jump rope and ended up in a chase. As I arrived at our back door panting and pounding desperately against it, my father opened the door, looking over the situation, said AYou probably brought this on yourself,@ and slammed the door back in my face. The rowdy boys within hearing distance turned to each other in surprise and simply walked away. My parents will never know how I suffered during these years. To add to the irony of the above cruel events, a few months before the invasion of Germany my father was given a ATop Secret@ task by the United States Army, teaching conversational German to its Allied officers of occupation, with each group of ninety officers having six weeks in which to complete the course. There were three groups to be trained, one right after the other. This was serious business; these men had to be knowledgeable enough to ask technical questions, give directions, and be able to reasonably fend for themselves, all speaking in German.

First, he had to familiarize them with the various accents they would encounter. There was a German baron and baroness with thirteen children, mostly young adults, who had arrived in Cleveland during the war. The baroness had been one-fourth Jewish but was able to escape since she was related to the Roosevelts. The entire family spent a few weeks at Hyde Park before arriving here. Their upper class accents would be perfect for some of the Adrillers@ Father would employ and others were recruited from the west side German settlement (all cleared by the FBI).

Every morning the officers sat in portable classrooms set up especially on the Western Reserve campus. The drillers were rotated often to familiarize the officers with their various German accents, while simultaneously teaching them the necessary conversation needed for living and governing, upon the pending occupation of Germany, by the United States. At lunchtime, Dad, some of the above teaching staff, and all of the brass took off in Jeeps to the German Import House. This was the largest German restaurant in town closed because of the war, now cleared by the FBI to be re-opened exclusively to introduce Dad=s on-the-job training course to his ninety uniformed men. During lunch the officers would put into practice what they had learned that morning as they were allowed to speak only in German to the waiters and waitresses, and under those circumstances could stay as long as they liked. The afternoon lesson was so popular that it continued with jovial beer drinking throughout dinner and on into the evenings and the check was picked up by the United States government. We rarely saw Dad for the next eighteen weeks. Upon the occupation of Germany, General Howley was appointed Governor of Berlin. He had been a colonel when Dad had trained him. The conversational German lessons had been so successful, the officers= command of the language so amazing for a short crash course, that Princeton University contacted Father to compile a book for them revealing the techniques he employed to accomplish this skillful mission. However, he did not comply, as he said shrugging to his friends, AHow do I put beer-drinking and camaraderie into a text book?@

When I was about eleven years old, during my last term of elementary school, my grandfather passed away. Dad, one of four sons, inherited his share of what was considered a comfortable sum in those days. So, he purchased a very unusual home on the next street, though it was modest in size, it consisted of various split levels, archways, pillars, and wrought iron balconies on the inside.

We no longer had a car because of severe gas rationing. Father and I went on a humongous furniture binge as we were within walking distance of a charming antique store. Mother, who was still working in the war plant, was glad to be relieved of this task. I was enthralled with the history of each piece of furniture acquired. The dining room chairs purchased to go with the Hepplewhite table, had come from the Schwab estate, and were originally fashioned for Czar Nicholas of Russia. Made of highly polished satinwood, intricately carved with a boar=s head and crown at the top, with the Czar=s royal crest in the center, they were magnificent. The round backs were covered in pigeon blood velvet with matching seats. The legs gracefully curved forming claws at the feet. Charles Schwab (steel magnate) had admired these chairs when he visited Nicholas at his palace in Yalta. When he returned to the States, a gift of the chairs already awaited him at his luxurious estate. The elegant seats had not readily sold. There were only five remaining in the set, thus they were ours for one hundred dollars each. Those were mega-bucks in those days for dining room chairs.

The sideboard, which was actually a tall oak cabinet with four doors divided by two drawers, was eighteenth century Italian style. The top set of doors consisted of a delicate, lacy scrolled iron grillwork through which one could view fine silver, crystal, or china. The lower two doors each had a subdued, craqueleured with age profile, one of a woman=s bust, the other a man=s, both polychromed in the classic style of a Botticelli painting. The living room couch was to be an elegant three-ovaled-back Victorian settee framed in an intricate brass network still upholstered in the original, faded soft Aubusson, the flower pattern of its day. This prime piece had belonged to Mrs. Gault, Woodrow Wilson=s second wife, and therefore had spent a bit of time in the White House. Other fine furnishings along with Oriental rugs were acquired to set the final stage. The over-all effect, with everything in place, was simply splendid! I was not aware of the jealousy growing in our neighborhood and evidently fanned it even more in their children by conducting guided tours at home, including in detail the provenance of each treasured piece of furniture.

Of course, if my father had not come into a small inheritance, he could not have afforded all of this on an associate professor=s salary. Teachers were very underpaid in the forties. He had trouble enough trying to coax his instructors to teach a six-week summer course because they would make far more money signing on with the university=s lawn maintenance crew.

By then my father also had acquired two Salvador Dali paintings, one of which was the famous telephone-and-fried-egg theme. This enthusiasm came about very naturally for me as it was so much a part of my lifestyle, but looking back now I realized it appeared to them as bragging. It was not long before I was invited to play baseball with the kids in the vacant lot, and a bit surprised because I did not excel at sports B having experienced the gym class captains all fighting to keep me off of their teams B but flattery will get you everywhere, so I eagerly ran down to the designated area.

To my dismay, there was to be no baseball game, but rather a punching session in which I was to be the victim. Each treasured piece was called out as I was shoved and pulled through the dirt and by the time I staggered home, I really wished that I could die. No one was there; Mother never came back from the defense plant until several hours after I arrived home from school, and now alone I contemplated sticking my head into the gas oven, hoping to end it all. My mother did have a talk with the parents of the children who had accosted me. It was agreed that in the future, I was to be left alone and have no more harassment. So, in my last year of elementary school I turned all of my energies into excelling at my studies. I began to reap various scholastic honors, continuing on in this vein throughout junior high and high school. I was even elected to the National Honor Society.

Meats, butter, sugar, candy, gasoline, silk stockings, were scarce during the war years. I did not like limeade sweetened with honey, or the awful white tub margarine with the dye packet that was to