The Music Room

The front door of my Grandma Santa's house opened into the living room. Straight ahead of the

living room was a large dining room, although it did not look as large when I was a teenager as

when I was a tyke. To the left of the front door, was the music room, which eventually became

a television room and finally, my Grandpa Joe's sick room.

Grandma and Grandpa were the first in our family to actually own a television set. From the

outset, there was a ceramic black leopard of about 12 inches long on top of the tv set. The

adults called it a tv light. The light bulb was located in the rear of the statuette, which caused

the leopard to have an aura around him. It was eerie.

People who remember those days, know that the prime-time line up was very limited. However, there was one thing that was on almost from the beginning: Friday Nights Fights. Eventually, there was Saturday Night Wrestling to complete the sports fantasy schedule.

After we moved to Winona and eventually got a car, we would all pile into the dark blue Dodge after dinner on Friday nights and head for Grandma's house. It was almost a half-hour drive,

but my Dad loved to watch Friday Night Fights. He and Grandpa Joe would watch the fights

that came on at 9 p.m. and lasted an hour. If the top matches finished early, a never-ending parade of novices were called into the ring so the program would come out exactly at

10 p.m. Daddy said that sometimes the program would end without the last bout even being

finished.

The women in the house were relegated to the dining room table where they fed babies and

reprimanded children. Of course, there was also eating and drinking at the table and in the

tv room. By the time 10 p.m. came, mothers and kids were ready to call it a night. I remember

when we left, it was always a relief to get outside because the house was usually on the warm

side. But then the cold night air smashed us in the face or the 90% humidity washed over us. I don't remember ever leaving the house on Friday nights when the weather was tolerable.

Now, if the Friday Night Fights had included other family members, such as the Gralikes

or the Veiles, we would stay out even later and go over on The Hill and have brain sandwiches.

The adults seemed to love them and the kids never knew. Our parents told us they were

hamburgers and we believed. Talk about blind trust.

I remember when Neil was 3 or 4 and already showing an interest in sports, he would join

the men in the television room and watch both the fights and wrestling. I suppose it was an

early case of bout mitzvah. It was also about this time that we kids discovered those crisp

squishy things were not hamburgers.