I was dictating the first story I was also eating an orange. I was about to take it apart to put it into sections, and I was doing so when it went off. A steady stream shot at me from about a foot. It hit me right in the forehead and it was one of the longest, most accurate streams of orange juice that ever hit me.”
We all eventually have columns, and each is beautifully, unconsciously revealing. In the first Kako’s Kolumn, she shyly tells us her column is short, “So she doesn’t take up too much of the paper.”
She’ll often comment on me. To my surprise, I learn from these pages that Kako, not Mom, is my principle caregiver.
As Editor and Reporter, Pogo’s humor and verbal dexterity are evident throughout.
Tom’s Topix is rare, but his columns display two outstanding characteristics. First, he’s highly motivated by rewards. He wins a jacket by selling the most newspaper subscriptions. Another time, he gets $5.00 for earning a better grade.
Second, he often voices the extreme desire we all share to excel:
“The play I am in is tomorrow. I am wearing a girl’s coat in the part of Santa Claus and hope that I will do well.”
“I hope and pray that I will do well.”
“I hope and pray I do a good job…. If we change the bird’s cage for thirty days, we get a dog.”
•••
Catholic bits are woven in and out. Father Dudley stopping by to bless the house. Dad going on retreat. Getting our throats blessed on St. Blaise Day. (You kneel at the communion rail. The priest crosses a pair of beeswax candles around your throat, saying, “May Almighty God, at the intercession of St. Blaise, bishop and martyr, preserve you from infections of the throat and from all other afflictions.” Very important in a broadcaster’s household.) Patron Saints and pagan babies peppered throughout.
The Journal notes that Dr. Richdorf pays a house call and says Pogo can go back to school half-days. After two months of home-schooling Pogo, Mom includes rare personal commentary. She clearly misses him:
“It was lonesome with Daddy taking the children to school and just the three of us left.” (Skip, me and her.)
•••
The ticking pendulum and golden chime of our grandmother clock sounded throughout our early childhood. Its arrival is noted. Pogo tells us that “It was bought off a covered wagon by the sellers’ ancestors.”
•••
You can feel Dad healing in these pages—by March he can broadcast the fights, which he relishes, especially now that he can’t exert himself. And he proudly covers a Yankees game—he loves the major leagues.
And now there’s more money—the following September, we read that Kako can transfer from public high school to Holy Angels and next year Pogo will be able to attend a Catholic military academy. Like Dad, all the boys will have a Jesuit education—morally sound and intellectually vigorous.
The Jesuits are sometimes called the Marines of Catholicism. As all O’Briens learned to be, they are devotees of philosophical debate, propagation of the faith, and the progress of the soul. Jesuits echo all over James Joyce.
We girls receive good Catholic education, too, including collateral Jesuit training since Dad and the boys love to debate and practice on us.
When I learn about Wall Street, I ask my father, “Do we have any stock?”
“All our stock is in our children,” he says.
They invested in us.
•••
In 1953, The Family Journal masthead includes: “Reader: Don O’Brien; Newsboy: Skipper; Society Editor: Irene. (Though I am but two years old, it surely tickled Aunt Irene, who had been Society Editor for the Omaha World Herald.)
Mom’s voice turns up from time to time:
“Printer’s Note:
The Editor is on the phone, the society editor is screaming in the printer’s ear because it is too late to go outdoors, the TV set is on so loud I can’t think—Pogo and Tom have been having a conversation with one at the head of the stairs and the other at the bottom—in other words, zero hour, and the noise is terrific. It will all subside in a little while. Tom is serving Stations at 7:15. MK has a baby-sitting job at 6:30, Daddy has a game tonight, and the Littles go to bed—and then it will be lonesome for Pogo and me.”
“I have to stop being The Printer and turn into The Cook.”
•••
Plump, motherly, warm Anna Hansen, an intermittent fixture of our childhood, is mentioned here. We’re well-off enough to hire a cleaning woman. She also made us the best Swedish pancakes on earth—with crispy buttery edges. She’d whip up a batch for Tuesday lunch and leave extras for us to eat after school—cold, rolled up with a spoonful of sugar. Proust never ate anything better.
According to Anna, at eleven months, “Irene is a wonderful child to entertain herself the way she does.”
Designs for a basement rumpus room are solicited. Plans for a root beer stand discussed. Parties are noted. Mom holds a meeting of Sacred Heart Alumnae:
“By dint of hard labor on the part of every member of the family… MK made brownies and tiny tea cookies and we served twenty Ladies! …The table looked very pretty with a centerpiece of white carnations and blue iris.”
On such occasions Kako dressed me up:
“I put a pinafore on Irene this afternoon and she has been calling herself Alice all afternoon and asking if anyone has seen her rabbit.”
•••
Here’s the surprise party thrown by the Olders for Mom and Dad’s fifteenth anniversary, featuring balloons, favors, hats, and “ice cream with a bell in it” for dessert. Mother gives Dad a combination pencil-lighter. He gives her a Swedish crystal vase and fifteen roses. Our gifts to them: “Bing Crosby’s My Girl’s an Irish Girl and Galway Bay, playing cards, a magazine for Dad and a green pencil for Mom, a comb for Dad and a comb for Mom.”
•••
There’s a summer gap from July till early September, when Pogo enters eighth grade and becomes a Junior announcer (his father’s footsteps). After a few issues, though, there’s a whopping hiatus of nearly two years, during which Jim is born.
But in January 1955, the Editor and reporters pick right up again for what will be the last three months of the paper until I assume editorship in 1964.
With the various school uniforms, “The O’Brien household looks like a Pentagon.” Kako’s a junior, Pogo’s a freshman cadet at the military academy, Tom’s in seventh grade, Skip’s in kindergarten, I’m watching “Ding-Dong School,” and baby Jim is in “Goo School.”
The basement rumpus room, begun two years earlier, is completed at last by the three Olders, who “decided to get the job done once and for all.” It’s great for ping-pong, “Done
