Everything Is Wrong with Me (4 page)

It is early on the morning of January 1, and I am tired. I had stayed up late with my mom the night before to watch the ball drop, but quickly went off to bed after that. Still, I lay awake until well after midnight, listening to the New Year’s Eve celebrations from the backyards, alleys, and houses surrounding mine. Neighbors blew cheap paper horns, set off firecrackers, banged pots and pans—some even fired guns. And even when that ended, through the bedroom wall I could hear our neighbor, Tony, singing a horribly bastardized drunken version of “Auld Lang Syne” to his wife, Marie, whom we didn’t talk to much because she was a pain in the ass. And Italian. Which is a double whammy, if I ever heard of one.

After splashing some warm water on my face to wake myself up, it’s downstairs to the kitchen for breakfast, usually a Tastykake (Coconut Junior? Koffee Kake?) and a nice tall glass of whole milk. But there is no time for sitting and watching
Good Morning America.
I have to get ready.

The layering begins. First I put on my underwear and T-shirt. Then long johns are piled on top of those. Next comes another layer, this one a sweatshirt and sweatpants, the latter guaranteeing that if I have to pee there will be a less than 15 percent chance I will be able to locate my bird and, considering all the effort it would take, I will probably be better off just peeing my pants.

Then my mom goes and gets the suit, which is unlike any other suit in the world, about as far away as possible from the jacket-and-slacks combination that the word conjures up. Every year the suit is a different set of colors, but it’s always something loud: green, white, and orange; purple, green, and black; red, white, and blue; blue, yellow, and red. When my mom brings it out from the closet, it’s already making its sound. The suit is made of a thick, cheap type of silk called bridal silk, and it makes a
whoosh-whoosh
when it moves, when fabric rubs against fabric.

The suit itself is one long garment, a tie around the waist dividing the long-sleeved top with its frilly cuffs from the bottom, a loose skirt with frills at its hem. There are also bloomers—baggy pants with elastic ties that cling around the knee and the waist—to go under the skirt. There is usually a hat involved and possibly a wig. And of course the matching umbrella, which will not be used to defend against rain but as an instrument for dancing.

My layering nearly complete, I pull on the bloomers. Then I raise my arms and my mom slips the suit over me. I yawn. Now that I’m fully dressed in my suit (or
dress
or
wench
or
costume
, whichever you prefer), the makeup goes on. My face is caked in white or yellow or green or whatever color most matches the suit. Even as a kid, in a twist that pains my father but that my mom attributes to good taste, I prefer green makeup if possible, because my eyes are green and I like the way the green face paint makes them look.
*

After that, the last step: the golden slippers. Really, this is the most crucial element of all, the one that separates the poseurs from the real thing. There are several variations, colors, and styles of the suit, but each person wearing one will have on golden slippers, which are old and comfy sneakers or boots that have been spray-painted gold, a tradition that dates back to the early days of the parade, but one for which I’ve never found a suitable explanation. If last year’s golden slippers cannot be located or no longer fit, newer sneakers or boots will be sacrificed and painted gold while they are on your feet, standing in the street or among parked cars.

Then my mom and I (and again, possibly Dennis) head out and start walking. We are “walking up the club,” just as hundreds of other neighborhood men, dressed like myself, are doing at this very moment when the sun has just come up on the morning of New Year’s Day. Most of these neighborhood men are already drinking (or perhaps better, are
still
drinking). We are walking up to the club in order to meet my dad, who has been there partying since about eight o’clock the night before.

Once we reach the club, more formally known as the James Froggy Carr Comic Club, my dad receives us from my mom, but not before giving her a gin-soaked “Happy New Year” kiss. He’ll take myself and my brother by the hand, comment on how good we look, and ask if we’re ready. We’ll spend the next eight hours walking, or rather marching, a few miles in the cold through the streets of Philadelphia, dancing to the music of bands, amid three hundred or so drunk men all dressed exactly like we are. We will do so under the “watchful” eye of our father, who at points during the day will be so inebriated that he may not be aware that he even has children. How we lived through these circumstances each New Year’s Day of my childhood and were not seriously injured or abducted I attribute to an Act of God.

It’s really not as weird as it seems. Just as dangerous, but not as weird.

But then again, miracles happen every year in the Philadelphia Mummers Parade.

There were no Masons in my neighborhood. No Knights of Columbus. No Elks Lodges, no Lions Clubs, no Rotary Clubs—not even, despite the heavily Irish American population, an Ancient Order of Hibernians. But there were lots of unions—for longshoremen, electricians, roofers, plumbers, and the like. And lots and lots of Mummers clubs.

Mummers clubs are the basic units of social life on Second Street, the name of my little corner of South Philadelphia. Second Street is an actual street, but the grid of streets surrounding Second Street make up the neighborhood of the same name, which is also called “Two Street.”
*
To say that you were from Second Street was not only a declaration of your address, but a pronouncement of your attitude, your worth, your essence. In a city like Philly, where you’re from says a lot about who you are. Words used to describe your typical Second Streeter might be those like the following:
hardworking
, since most worked long hours in unglamorous jobs in order to provide the best possible lives for their families;
genuine
, since pretension didn’t come around these parts much; and
tough
, since things like having a full set of teeth or a clean criminal record took a backseat to making sure you were respected. But one word was more important than the rest:
loyal
. One could count on his fellow Second Streeter to help with any problem that might have arisen, whether it was as simple as borrowing a few bucks to cover the electric bill or helping to dispose of a weapon that may or may not have been used in that thing that was in the paper on Tuesday. There were exceptions, to be sure, bad seeds and broken friendships as in any other community, but there is no replacement for the bonding and loyalty that arises in a neighborhood built on close relationships—one in which you go to school with kids whose fathers work with your father, whose mothers play cards with your mother, where the girl you marry is just as likely to have sat next to you in first grade as to be someone you meet as an adult—and the trust and respect that these relationships engender. This, more than anything else, explains the heart of Second Street; on the day you’re born, you are automatically connected to hundreds of people.

My father was the fourth of ten kids, my mom the third of six. This was not unusual. Between my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, their families, their coworkers, the people they drank with, and the people they went to school with, the answers to “What’s your last name?” or “Who’s your father and mother?” were supremely important in determining who you were, what you were like, and what you were likely to do, before you could even say or do anything.

The Mummers clubs represented a deeper layer of categorization in the neighborhood. First, you were from Philly; next, you were a Second Streeter; third, you were a Mulgrew or a Flood or a Kane; and lastly, you were a member of your particular Mummers club (often these last two were closely related). Architecturally, the clubs were nothing more than redesigned row homes, with a bar and a TV or two on the first floor and the rooms upstairs filled with pool tables or club paraphernalia. In this way, they acted as social clubs for their members—places to gather, have a drink, and unwind. These members would be from similar social, educational, and economic backgrounds, but so would everyone in the neighborhood. What set them apart from every other person they passed on the street was that they belonged to
their
Mummers club. In a world where options were seemingly limited, in an ironic twist, the association with a Mummers club represented the one attainable characteristic that could make a man unique.
We graduated from the same high school, both work on the waterfront, and we drink at the same bars, but I belong to Fralinger and you belong to Quaker City
.

Functionally, the clubs existed to take part in the Mummers Parade, a Philadelphia New Year’s Day tradition for more than a century officially. However, the parades actually date back many centuries.
*
The original Mummers were performers who would parade around medieval England on Christmas Day, putting on folk dramas.
**
Eventually, the tradition was put to an end in England by winemaker Carlo Rossi and his Terrible Gang of Nine, much to the chagrin of these Mummers, who only wanted to party.
***

Exhibit 163 in the future FBI “Jason Mulgrew: Serial Killer” file.

The American Mummers parade dates back to colonial times, when immigrants (mostly Swedish) gathered together on New Year’s Day in the southeast part of the city—the area that my family would inhabit thousands of millions of years later, and which Second Street runs right through—to get drunk, dance, and bang on their neighbors’ doors.
*
You know, typical immigrant behavior.
**
How these Swedish immigrants picked up Mummery from the Brits is unknown, but as my Grandpop Mugs has told me every single day from my infancy: Swedes steal. Constantly.
***

The first official Mummers Parade in Philadelphia was on January 1, 1900. Every New Year’s Day in Philly since then, the nation’s sixth-largest city has completely shut down, its main streets and roads blocked off, as a quarter of a million rabble-rousers of all ages pack Broad Street to watch the Mummers parade to City Hall—think Philly’s version of Mardi Gras, but instead of frat boys, Hurricanes, and tits, there are Eagles fans, cans of Bud, and hoagies.

At Philadelphia City Hall, a panel of judges gathers to decide which club is most worthy of first prize.
****
How a Mummers club wins the parade is complicated and, for our purposes, almost irrelevant. Long gone are the days when a bunch of Swedes got drunk and played knock-knock runaway on their neighbors’ doors. The modern-day Mummer is divided into four types; each type has a winner, so really there are four winning clubs in the parade.
*****
Here’s a quick lesson:

• The Comis—The most basic of all Mummers with the least elaborate costumes, they are the first to march in the parade and also the rowdiest. The Comics groups range in size from a dozen people to as many as seven hundred. My family’s club, Froggy Carr, is a Comics club.
  
• The Fancies—More elaborate than the Comics but less elaborate than the String Bands and Fancies Brigades. They also have more advanced “themed” costumes that are usually topical in nature (imagine a dozen or so different Fancies wearing stained blue dresses after the Clinton/Lewinsky episode).
  
• The String Bands—The heart and soul of the parade, with live music, choreography, themes, and intricate costumes. Because of this, they are a big crowd favorite.
  
• The Fancy Brigades—The most extravagant and ornamental part of the parade. The Fancy Brigades do not play their own music but instead have large set pieces, floats, and complex choreography set to recorded music. The makeup is nearly professional, as local blue-collar guys who think a
  heterosexual
  is some form of supergay are turned into vampires, jungle animals, or aliens, depending on that year’s theme.