By Jim Parker
It was 1947. The great world war, that was said to end all wars, had just ended two years earlier and our nation was still putting itself back together. I was 7 years old and the second son of Mr. and Mrs. Frank and Margaret Parker, who lived on Chicago’s southwest side in a community known as Marquette Park. My brother Bill and I were blessed with two older, and to this day I firmly believe, wiser and more thoughtful sisters. I was too young at the time to realize just how beautiful my sisters actually were. But I’m certain their boyfriends did. Later in life I came to the conclusion that actress Elizabeth Taylor’s career was in all probability launched simply the result of my sister Margaret Mary, with her long, black satin hair, and heartwarming smile, was too busy to attend Hollywood’s audition for their upcoming movie “Velvet.”; My sister Harriet Ann, with her saddle shoes and quick-witted personality, could easily ha ve doubled for Judy Garland when she first stared with Mickey Rooney, and later in the 1946 hit movie, “The Harvey Girls.”; But I don’t think mom and dad saw “Tinsel Town”; as the place for their pretty and young Harriet Ann. …A convent perhaps, but not Hollywood!
Christmas in our home was celebrated somewhat in its own style. Our Christmas tree, an enormous Douglas Fir that always seem to burst right through the living room ceiling, and dwarfed Santa’s village and Lionel’s railroad that lie beneath it, was our families Christmas centerpiece and principle gift from Santa himself. A gift he carried all the way from the North Pole the very night he and his reindeer soared through the heavens with all of his other toys and gifts for a world in waiting. We as the Parker family never saw nor smelled that revered evergreen tree until we rose on Christmas morning. A family tradition, I believe mom and dad had begun as the result of the great depression.
Then, as a nation you’d be hard pressed in finding much money or signs of its financial prosperity. Our nations wealth during that period in time, now believed to be long since diminished, where human virtues. Virtues like love, trust, integrity and dedication to family values. They were the gifts that were bountiful and found everywhere and practiced within every home, neighborhood, village and city throughout the land. It was a time in America the only drugs were aspirin, and never did you hear of kids giving their souls to the devil through the use of cocaine and alcohol. Parents, to make ends meet often worked two jobs, yet saw to it, that seldom would either mom or dad not be on hand for whatever the needs of their children. It was truly the American family that powered the engines that built the greatest nation in the world, while at the same time, proudly and clearly, was then and always shall be, our nat ions greatest wealth.
My mom, a pretty Irish girl, born and raised on Chicago’s west side, had four sisters and one brother. Her father, Michael S. Kerwin, seemingly like most all west side Irishmen, was a fireman. In fact, before retirement grandpa Kerwin was promoted to Fire Marshall of our third largest city in the nation. Uncle Mike, the husband of mom’s sister Francis was also a Chicago fireman. Heck, I was some 10 years old before I realized that not every Irishman was a billiard player and Chicago fireman! And I suspect if anyone has to be either praised or faulted for what I’ve done with so very much of my life, it would have to be poor uncle Mike. And the irony in what I’m about to tell you is that uncle Mike never lived long enough to even see, or feel the inferno blaze that he as a fireman, not only didn’t extinguish, but on the contrary, a fire he himself started within the heart of his nephew. Mike die d suddenly of a aneurysm shortly before my 11th birthday.
I don’t recall if it snowed on Christmas day, December 25, 1947. What I do recall is my brother Bill and I, were for hours lying on the living room floor playing with our Lionel train set and thinking of new ways we could rebuild its little village. Lincoln logs and that amazing erector set, were the two gifts I just couldn’t stop playing with for five minutes, even later in the day after all of our aunts and uncles began arriving for Christmas dinner.
My dad worked some 46 years with one company. He was drafting supervisor for the Kellogg Switchboard and Supply Company. As builders of telephone switchboard equipment that at the time was often enclosed in elaborate mahogany cabinets, Kellogg’s had an enormous wood shop. To finish the portion in our basement we used as our holiday dining room and family recreation room, dad had carried home scraps of used and discarded crating lumber. Often with sections still nailed together. After breaking the sections apart, the wood that was too torn-up would go into the furnace and help heat the house, and the used nails went into a wooden box for future projects. Dad then used the salvageable lumber to later build various projects around the house. When pop began to build something, one of my jobs was to sit with a hammer on the basement floor, and vigorously pound and straighten, what seemed like hundreds of bent nails. The ones that were too rusty went into the garbage. I think I was about 12 before I learned you could actually buy a brand new, clean and shiny, perfectly straight nail!
It was within this basement dining room that mom and pop would host all of our family holiday dinners and family parties. From the old crating lumber and not wasting one scrap, dad cleverly designed and built with the precision of a fine cabinet-maker, some 30-foot long banquet table with removable wooden legs. Thus, after the holiday’s, we would remove the legs, and move the table to its resting place against the outside wall. …Where on its side, resting on carefully placed wooden cleats, dad held it to the wall with a series of screen hooks and eyes. When setting up the table for each holiday, dad would first cover it with newspaper, that mom later covered with some three or four of her finest Irish linen tablecloths.
It was nothing short of a homespun miracle the way mom and pop were able to transform and old, cold, dark basement, complete with its webs of round coal-furnace ducts running everywhere, into a warm and glowing holiday dining room. A room that after our aunts and uncles arrived for Christmas dinner reeked with holiday charm and family love. If a shingle was ever built and hung outside our little Chicago bungalow, I’m certain it would have read, “The Parker Palmer House.”;
Mom and dad cooked and served a traditional Christmas dinner, so eye appealing, delicious and filling, it could only be described in the thousand words of a Norman Rockwell painting. After dinner it was time to go back upstairs for the opening of everyone’s afternoon presents. …The presents we had earlier received from Santa were long since opened at the crack of dawn. It had become a family custom that we all gather in the living and dining rooms, and as close to the Christmas tree as possible. After pop turned on the record player and invited Bing Crosby and his “White Christmas”; into our home, someone was chosen to pass out the gifts. On this day there were some eighteen of us, yet in later years, after those pretty sisters of mine married, that figure soared to some thirty.
It wasn’t long that someone called out the names, “Billy and Jimmy.”; I think it was either aunt Francis or uncle Mike. But for certain, it was the strong hands of uncle Mike that handed Billy and I a huge box that together we could hardly carry and set down on the dining room table. If there were ever such a thing as a speed limit for opening a Christmas present, Billy and I would have surely been arrested and spent the rest of Christmas day in jail. No sooner than we set that box on the dining room table, that its brilliant wrappings were off, on the floor, and instantly became part of mom’s oriental rug! After tearing open one end of a heavy cardboard box, we pulled and tugged until finally removing its contents, something I had never seen before. Yet by the close of that Christmas day, up to and including the writing of this story, I’ve never forgotten and never will. It was a little table top pool table, mea suring some three feet long, and foot and a half wide.
With billiard balls not much larger than oversize marbles, uncle Mike showed Billy and I how to hold a billiard cue, aim, take a few strokes, and shoot a ball into a pocket. Or at least try to! Most everyone that day, including aunt Anna, Francis, Marion and Josephine, all took turns at the table. Even with his crippling arthritis, uncle Burt managed to put in a good showing for the men’s side of the family. Laughing, giggling, and an occasional bursting-out with an exiting, HOLY COW, when trying to fit those little balls into pockets that seemed even smaller than the balls themselves. As a child, it was one of the most memorable Christmas day’s I can ever remember. In fact, over the following seven or eight years, whenever friends came over and we were looking for something to do, out came that little toy pool table. The box became so worn it found itself in the garbage within the first year or two. Yet that little table itself, offering everything from challenge and laughter, to the simple amusement of its visible ball return that allowed you to watch the return path of a billiard ball, always somehow managed to turn a possible dull visit into an exiting and fun filled event.
All of what I’ve just told you, is a true story, yet now, only a memory from more than a half-century ago. Yet over those fleeting years, those precious memories somehow fostered a dream, a dream that later blossomed into the world of reality. Today, that childhood experience has resulted in the founding of The Illinois Billiard Club. The oldest, most prestigious, million dollar plus, self-owned and stylishly active private billiard club in the United States. …Complete with the elegance and charm of a matching hundred-seat 19th century dining and banquet facility. All of which has evolved largely through the integrity of its membership, while also providing the public side of society the unique opportunity of not simply and typically celebrating and exhausting man’s weekly paycheck, but more importantly, hosting societies most revered and prestigious celebrations of life itself. …Ranging from elegant wedd ing receptions, birthday parties, family and corporate functions, to heartfelt retirement parties.
While all of this might seem as a wonder in itself, it’s only a small part of the whole story, which will have to wait for another day. But today, what you should be told is this. While the game of billiards (all cue games) has no mind of its own, it nonetheless, possesses the spirit of survival as no other game in the history of humankind. Since its 14th century birth it has been divided into two distinctively different classifications. Known simply as public, and private.
The public side of billiards has for generations seen the game kicked about, exploited and given little dignity. When in complete contrast, along with the principle reason for the games more prominent survival is the private side of our American society. Most specifically, history tells us it has been within private homes, private clubs, civic, community and fraternal organizations that billiards has managed to maintain a level of dignity, integrity and usefulness to an often more progressive side of society. To expand billiards borders from this vantage point, The Illinois Billiard Club as a private facility, has launched the first successfully organized, complete family, billiard association in the history of American billiards, known as, “The Federation of Fathers and Sons of American Billiards.”;
This coming January 26th of the new year 2003, will also realize another new addition to the game of billiards with the inclusion of both mothers and daughters within our clubs now proven family concept. As all national events hosted by The Illinois Billiard Club (IBC) for the past 27 years, this, our centerpiece of social benefit, is by reservation and available to the general public.
The last Sunday of each month, family organized two-player teams consisting of children of all ages and their parents of all ages, gather at Bonnie’s breakfast table at 10 a.m. After a wholesome breakfast buffet, followed with family and group photos provided by the IBC, begins an amateur scotch doubles eight ball tournament. Cost is $35 per team, which includes breakfast for both of the family members, all club and tournament charges, plus photos and awards for the top two finishers. There are no cash prizes.
The success of this innovative program is not based on money, as are, and have been, typical billiard events. It’s based on what the public side of billiards in America has never successfully serviced within its 140-year recorded existence. Bringing together our nations greatest wealth …the American family.
To enter, gather up the kids and call us for a reservation. Or kids, discuss with your parents the possibility of sharing an inner activity together as a family, while at the same time meeting other families. What all of this amounts to is this. Who better and more qualified to share the golden moments of time with a child than his or her parents that both through love and evolution are most sensitive to their today’s well being and tomorrows future? Think about it. Then, if interested, call or email Jim Parker at 708.839.1331 or PJimandBon@aol.com.
Our next family event will be hosted on Sunday January 26, 2003. While I no longer have that Lionel train set, I’ll nonetheless ask Santa for permission to keep his Christmas tree up and lit, a little longer this year. …So I’ll be able to share with you my Christmas memories, in hopes they might someday become part of yours.