FAME

My secret desire is to be a little famous. Not famous like Al Capone (he was infamous), nor famous like a certain hotel heiress (who is famous for being famous and being tossed in the clink), not even famous like a movie star or sports hero. Just famous enough, say, to have an autographed picture of me hanging near my booth at a popular restaurant. It's not likely to happen. About a year ago I took a young person from my church out to lunch. Sure enough some absolute strangers came up to the table and asked her if she had been in a theater production they saw a few weeks before. Me? I could have been leftover chopped liver. 'Taint fair McGee, as my grandfather would have said.

Speaking of my grandfather, he had a certain claim to fame. He was by profession a tailor, most particularly a schneider, a cutter. The cutter was the person who use a knife to cut a pattern from dozens of pieces of fabric piled on a table and produce the makings for dozens of items at once time. This was more than wielding a knife. The cutter had to know how to lay out the pattern to use the material efficiently and how to adjust the pattern if he were making, say, a size 40 coat instead of 36. The outfit he worked for, Marcus Ruben, made uniforms. There was one uniform, however, that my grandfather made entirely by himself, the chief's outfit worn by Little Oscar.

I don't know if Little Oscar was known outside the Chicago area, but he was the "mascot" for the Oscar Mayer company. He would ride around in a truck shaped like a hotdog (the wiener mobile) and make personal appearances where he handed out Weenie Whistles. Little Oscar (portrayed by George Molchan) was a "vertically challenged" person, what we called short people in those politically incorrect days. Being a small person, he couldn't just go in an buy a chief's uniform and hat off the rack. My grandfather made them for him. I know this to be true because one day my grandmother spotted the wiener mobile and Little Oscar passing out whistles so she said to him, "My husband used to make you uniforms." There was a momentary pause, then little Oscar said, "Johnny!" It was the only time I ever hear anyone call my grandfather that.

His son, my father, also had a certain claim to fame. Dad was a machinist. In his early years he worked for the F. B. Reddington Company. They made packaging machines. They designed and built the elaborate devices that put products in boxes or bottles or cans and labeled them. I can remember one of the machines that Dad helped build. One was the Cracker Jack packer. It opened up flat boxes so they could hold the product, poured Cracker Jack into them, sealed it, and then covered it with it's foil wrapper. Now this machine must have also put the prize in, but I have no memory of that function. You see we frequently got unwrapped boxes of Cracker Jack at hope (test boxes), but I don't recall that they ever had a prize in them.

That's my family's accomplishments. What about me? Well, what little claim to fame I can make are all associated with my college years. First, the college itself, the Chicago Musical College of Roosevelt University. CMC is one of the oldest schools of music in the United States, older even than Juliard. It was founded by Florenz Ziegfield, Sr., the father of the Flo Ziegfield of the Follies fame. Our most famous student? Jack Benny, of course. (Why do people snicker when I mention that. He was a good violinist.) Claim to fame number two. I studied voice my first year with none other than than Jimmy Stewart's high school music teacher. OK, so Stewart wasn't noted as a singer, but who can forget him singing with Donna Reed, "Buffalo Gals Won't you Come Out Tonight." My musical career at this prestigious institution included singing in the premier of Ulysses Kay's work "Stephen Crane Set " and in the multimedia stage production "Third Planet from the Son." (Google them.) Third claim to fame, my 1971 dinner with one of the contestants in that year's Miss America pageant. Yes, indeed. Anita Pankratz, Miss Illinois, was also a student at CMC. Of course, I had known her for years. I did indeed have dinner with her. I just leave out the information that there were maybe eight or ten people at the same table and she came as someone else's date. People don't have to know ALL the facts.

Well, that's about it. Andy Warhol once said "In the future everybody will be world famous for fifteen minutes." This is the future and I figure I've had about 3.5 seconds of fame. No make that and even fife seconds. There have been over 800 hits on my blog in the past year and that's worth something.

Whether or not your journey brings you fame, may the Lord God bless you on your way and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne