A Little Concrete Tale
For
@ShayP There was a kid on our block named Raymeo - pronounced Ray-Me-Oh. I never knew a Raymeo before they moved in katty-korner three houses down and I've never met a Raymeo since then. He was not a well liked kid - quite frankly he was a little prick. An Eddie Haskell type around adults and the kind that would throw rocks at squirrels or burn insects with a magnifying glass just for the hell of it. He also would never shut up - just a constant stream of consciousness babble would emanate from his mouth. "Blah blah blah blah woof woof woof" in a never ending stream.
Our neighborhood was pretty close to the one depicted in Clint Eastwood's movie Gran Torino - except that it was in its full glory at that time. Almost to a man, the Dads on the street were WWII or Korean veterans. Everyone was of either Polish or German descent and all the Dads had factory gigs - most of them with one of the Big Three [Mine being an exception as he worked for General Electric]. All the homes and yards were meticulously maintained and kept in first class condition as a matter of pride. Well except for the dude that lived on our side of the street four houses down. It was not a shit hole or anything but was a tad run down. Some slack was cut because the guy that owned it had a rough time in the war and had periodic bouts of "The Blues" where he wouldn't keep the house or yard up. He was in the Philippines at the time the big one kicked off and the Japanese captured him and apparently tortured the shit out of him for the duration. He was bit off - he never got married, just worked his gig down at Dodge Main and tried to keep it together as best he could. The Dad's on the street were sympathetic.
Then Raymeo's family moved in. The Father was a small, mousy little feller who didn't have a factory gig. He sold ovens and washing machines down at the Highland Appliance. Raymeo's Mom. Hoo boy. She was something else. Their family was not either Polish or German, but rather Albanian or some Adriatic sort of place like that. You have probably heard of "olive skinned" individuals from that region of the world. She was above and beyond that - I swear she was greenish. Not a swarthy complexion but sort of a light "Santa Claus Versus the Martians" kind of green. Freaky. She was also a big woman. As wide as she was tall - kind of a massive, fireplug type of build. Her voice was a booming contralto - and it would pierce the air like a knife and seemed to carry for miles. If she lived in NC, she would be a strong candidate at the hollering contest held down in Spivey's Corner each year.
To say they did not fit in was an understatement. Yard and home maintenance were things that held no interest to them. The immaculate home they had purchased went downhill at an incredible rate. It was so bad that the guy that lived next to them planted a hedge. He fertilized it and watered it diligently and before long it was an impressive barricade - tall and thick and impervious to Albanian slovenliness. We had a great view of the "High Hay" from our dinner table. Dinner for us was pretty regimented. My Old Man got home from work at about 4:30 everyday. He performed maintenance on and repaired blast furnaces and some days he came home looking like a West Virginia coal miner - just covered with soot and grime. So there was a little delay to give him some time to get cleaned up but Mom always had dinner ready to go at 5:15. We were eating once when Dad was like "Holy Jesus. Lookatthatshit! She looks like a Sherman tank struggling through the hedgerows in Normandy". Sure enough, Raymeo's Mom was trying to fight her way through the neighbors hedge and was losing badly . Of course we three kids just busted out laughing while Mom made Mom type noises while stating that it wasn't funny and that we should shush and mind our own business.
The Albanians had no set schedule for dinner so whenever it was ready, it was ready. It might be 5PM or 6PM or 7PM. So that meant that when it was time, Raymeo had to be called home to eat if he was out and greasing about. This is where that big contralto came into play: "Raaaaaaaayyyyy-Meeeeeeeeee-Oh. Raaaaaaaayyyyy-Meeeeeeeeee-Oh. Raaaaaaaayyyyy-Meeeeeeeeee-Oh." would boom out across the early evening quiet. It had a grating quality to it and one never could get used to it.
So the stage is partially set before we get to the concrete but there is just a tad more background. While most definitely not an absolute a lot of the ethnicities tended work in certain jobs. The blacks, germans and polish quite often worked in a factory. The greeks owned and ran restaurants along with the party stores and arabs ran many of the small businesses - dry cleaners, tailors, stuff like that. The italians ran the fruit stands and dominated the brick laying, concrete and stonework business. If you needed something along those lines done, it was for certain that crew of guys whose names ended in vowels would be involved. So it happened one day where a guy down the street was getting a new driveway poured. Big event for the kids in the neighborhood! We were all down there watching the action. The paisans were in full Good Fellah's glory - short, stocky guys with bushy mustaches and thick accents. They were yukking it up with each other as they worked and were having a splendid time. Splendid that is until Raymeo showed up. He instantly went into his schtick. Just being a pest - flying them non-stop. "blah blah blah". Finally Pietro had enough. With lightning speed he filled his trowel with some 4,000 PSI and with a flick of the wrist sent it on a majestic arc flying through the air on a rainbow trajectory. PLOP! Right in Raymeo's earhole. Direct hit. The effect on him was electric - "WAAAH I got cement in my ear. Help me! WAAAH! I got cement in my ear". Of course none of us kids were gonna help him - even if we knew how. I mean what do you do with an auditory canal full of wet cement? The paisans were not sympathetic to his plight either: "Ahh. Pietro. Bellissimo!"
Raymeo slunk off home wailing all the way- I guess they had to take him to the ER to get all that shit out hosed out before it hardened. I suppose it really isn't much of a story. I thought it was a hoot at the time but now that I look back, it is pretty messed up to jam a kids earhole with wet cement.
