Alex John

Alex and Pete John lived in the two family flat next door to our home; on our left, number 763, in the second floor unit, on Aubert Avenue. Their parents owned the house. Their father owned a shoe shine store somewhere downtown.

Alex was about six months older than I; she started school the semester before me. In school, I was the better student, because in the early grades I passed her up when I received several double promotions. But in social situations she had what we call today "street smarts". She was more worldly than I was, pushy, calculating, sly and domineering. Physically we resembled each other a little, we were both dark, our hair was cut the same, bangs in front, we were the same height, and both were slightly chubby.

Alex and I played together all the time. One day, when we were both preschoolers, we were playing on the screened back porch of my house. My mother was in the front of the house, busy with her household chores. My sister Olympia was with her.

Alex and I decided to play Barber. I got a comb from the dresser in my mother's bedroom. We decided we needed a pair of scissors also. I went back into the bedroom where my mother had a treadle, foot driven Singer sewing machine; pulled out a drawer on the side of the machine and found a pair of scissors. I went back to the porch and gave them to Alex who was patiently waiting for me. My mother and Olympia were still in the front of the house, unaware of what Alex and I were doing. We decided I would cut Alex's hair first. I took the scissors and started cutting her bangs. Her hair was straight, and the cutting I did, did not look very different from what her hair looked like when we started. There was a pan of water on the table on the porch, and I dropped her cut hair in the water. The strands of black hair were floating on top of the water.

Alex told me now she was going to be the barber. I quietly acquiesced. She proceeded to comb my hair, then took the scissors and decided to cut some of my bangs off. Since my hair was curly, Alex had trouble cutting it. She finally made some progress. I no longer had straight bangs across my forehead, but had skin showing through the gaps in my hair. She had me turn around, looked at me closely, and proceeded to cut big chunks of hair from the back of my head. She was having an equally hard time cutting my hair in back because of the curls. Some of the cuttings had missed the pan of water, and were now on the porch floor, and on the floor in the kitchen. We got tired of playing Barber, so we decided to play Doctor. We went to play in the kitchen, under the table.

Just then Olympia came into the kitchen and saw us under the table. She stooped down to take a closer look at us, to see what we were doing; saw black hair on the floor, took one look at me, and started shrieking at the top of her lungs, "Mama, Mama, Mama". At this unexpected turn of events, Alex started crying, got out from under the table, and ran out of the kitchen, through the back porch, down the steps, through the fence, and next door to her home. With Olympia's frantic screaming, my mother rushed into the kitchen to see what the commotion was about. She was visibly upset at what she saw, jagged wisps of hair hanging over my face, across the sides and the back of my neck, instead of a hairline going straight across, she saw an irregular crude cut. She heard but did not see her neighbor's child rushing home in tears.

My mother was not a woman given to verbal eruptions or histrionics. Instead, she said in a calm voice, "It will be alright. Jennie's hair will grow out again", and the matter was closed. For my part, I was not perturbed in the least. Whatever mischief Alex had done to my hair was fine with me. To me, it was not of crucial importance. As my mother said, it would grow out again!

As far as Alex was concerned, I don't know if she ever told her mother what had happened; but my mother did not approach Alex's mother, or make an issue out of the incident. She merely let the matter close. After that hair-raising incident, for a little while Alex and I did not play together. Needless to say, when we did start playing together again, we were never allowed to play unsupervised.

Pete was older than Alex, and about a year older than my sister Olympia. In his early teens he was a typical boy, very active. There was a garage in their back yard, and one day playing with other boys, he climbed up on the roof of the garage. He tried to jump down, and broke his arm. At that time his mother had remarried, and to cover up his mischief, they told the stepfather Pete stumbled and fell from the front porch steps and broke his arm. In essence Pete was mild mannered, happy, interested in gymnastics, and a good student; eventually winning a scholarship to the University of Indiana at Indianapolis. My mother had baptized Pete, making us koumbari.

Their mother, Eleni, or as she was referred to, Eleniara, was from Smyrna. She was what is commonly referred to today as a "bitch". She was a constant nag to her husband, and children. An extremely domineering woman, she boasted with great pride that in her house the living room was out of bounds, no one was allowed to sit in the living room on her clean, slip-covered furniture, not even her husband, wishing to relax after a day's work at the cleaners.

She was a plain looking woman, certainly no beauty. Her hair was pulled back in a bun at the nape of the neck. I recall vividly many days when she would call from her back porch for her son who was playing with his friends, calling, in Greek, "Pete, ella doe Pete". One of the non-Greek boys, Stanley Roche, took great delight in mimicking her, "Pete, ella doe Pete".

Her husband Paul was a short man. He worked long hours and wasn't home very much. Alex's mother and father were having many arguments, this was during the Depression when the economy was bad. The neighbors could hear them quarreling. The last time I recall seeing him was in the summer on a Sunday afternoon. I was about nine years old. Alex and I were sitting on my front porch playing with our dolls. Her father came walking down the street, and up their front steps. He opened the screen door, paused and said in a soft voice, "Alex, come home now". Alex picked up her doll, climbed over the fence, and went into her house.

That evening, just as it was getting dark, we heard screams from Alex's house. Pete came running down the steps, and went to a neighbor who had a telephone, to call an ambulance. The next morning we found out Alex's father was dead, a suicide. He had swallowed iodine. It was commonly whispered he could no longer cope with the negatives of his life, his shoe shining business was doing poorly, the constant nagging of his wife, her lack of understanding of his efforts of trying to eke out a living for his family, were more than he could bear. He left her with a paid up life insurance policy of a thousand dollars, plus the two family flat.

According to the 1930 census the house was worth $9,000. It had been constantly whispered someone would appear on the scene to marry her because, as a widow owning a house, she was a desirable prospect. Within six months Eleni had remarried. He was a tall, thin, gaunt Greek man who reminded a person what Abraham Lincoln must have looked like without his beard. His last name was Charbas, and he worked in a shoe factory. He was a kind, friendly man, born in mainland Greece. He was a very religious man, who scrupulously followed the religious holidays and fasted. He boasted he ate cheese and tomatoes when fasting.

In time we each went our own way. Alex married at the age of eighteen, and she and her husband Murphy moved away. Her stepfather Charbas died about a year later. Her mother Eleni sold the house, and moved in with Alex and Murphy. By that time Pete was in Indianapolis, at the University of Indiana. While a student at the university, Pete worked in a Greek restaurant. The owner had a daughter, Pete and she married and he remained in Indianapolis. We also sold our home a few months after Eleni sold hers, and we moved to 5021 North Kingshighway.

© 2003 by Jennie Constantinides Vlanton

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