Evelyn, easily the prettiest of the four daughters, was then engaged to a young man named Carl "Cullie" Berger, a fledgling in the automobile business, and whether a date had been fixed for their nuptials is lost in the mists of time, but even so it was not enough to dissuade my father, who proposed to Evelyn, and, by God, eloped with her to New York on the spur of the moment, leaving Cullie and the consequences to fade into an oft-repeated comic anecdote. For a while he worked for Reid Paper Company in Saginaw, until he and another junior executive left to go out on their own, and before his death in 1957 at the age of sixty-three from cancer, he had become something called O'Brien Enterprises, which entailed leasing a fleet of cars to busy businessmen, doing some packaging designing, and primarily representing a new process called Cry-O-Vac, the plastic second skin affixed first to turkeys and hams that was about to proliferate all over the country, for which he was to represent exclusive sales over seven Eastern states.ĭuring his tenure at Reid Paper Company, he caught the eye of a young secretary, Evelyn MacArthur, the daughter of a Saginaw executive of the Automobile Club of America, who was himself a Scot born in Glasgow, and the proud, patrician father of three other lovely young daughters-Marion, Bernice, and Aldine. He had served in the Navy at the conclusion of World War I, enough to get some advanced education in Annapolis, but just how much or what kind was never shared with me. George O'Brien, was a complex, spirited guy, a small businessman who was basically a salesman. World War II was revving up, which would eventually reverse the damages of the Great Depression, the scars of which marked almost all the adults that comprised my family and my family's circle of friends. Mary's Hospital, and my father was down in the car in the parking lot, listening to Jack Benny on the radio. I was born in Saginaw, Michigan, the evening of the eighteenth of June in 1939. And if it takes something to get the ball started rolling in one direction or another, it didn't seem altogether likely to occur in the land of my birth. Because I understand it has been recently discovered there are people born with a genetic disposition toward optimism, and here I stand-hardwired for happiness, as it were: round and shiny. But I might well be one of those people you remember as having been, well, larger, rounder than I am. In all probability, as the decades accumulate and like most other men, I gain. I've always exhibited something of "roundness," and no matter what my shape or weight, I almost inevitably get the same comment from friends I've not seen in some time: "You've lost weight, right?" No. Well, not to put too fine a point on it, the same thing might be said of me. Consider the lowly pinball yes, it's a ball bearing, no question.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |