Chapter Eight: Toot Sweet!

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Eight:  Toot Sweet!

“Tout suite!”

“Tout suite!” was the favorite phrase of my grandmother.   She would have no truck with laziness, and in her mind, a moment’s rest was a moment wasted!

Mary Dolan Barrington’s genealogical searches rather dubiously attached her family to French royalty.    She recognized and reluctantly admitted that she had gathered very few facts to support her research.   Facts never really got in the way of a good story in our family so Grandma Mary would beat down any challenge to her theories with her world famous ‘raised eyebrow’ and a stare like that could (and  would) ice up at least the first three gates of hell.

 

Mary’s personage was more politely expressed in French:  She was ‘glace’!  When she added a few pounds to her petite frame, she became La Glaciere!   On good days she could be described as La Crème Glacée;  La Glaçon; La Verglas;, La Glaçage.  To me she was Ma grand-mère avec La Sucre Glace.  

She never noticed the sniggering of her Barrington in-laws about her purchase of an ice cream store (which she always referred to as a boutique).   The Barrington’s would often comment how La Boutique Glacee’s ice cream was the coldest cream in New Jersey, and then add that this coldness was achieved without the aid of refrigeration!   Mary saw this statement as homage the fine quality ice cream that she served, and never realized that the Barrington’s were saying that the ice cream’s coldness was achieved through its proximity to Mary!

On bad days she was La Vent du Nord (the North Wind).  Her natural sangfroid would readily discourage any and all challenges to her royal lineage.  The pretensions that she adopted to support her confiance en soi (self-belief) were more thoroughly researched than her royal lineage and her faux-Patrician accent cemented everyone’s belief in her French origins.

 Mary created and adapted herself to a French persona.   Had there been an Alliance Francais to join in Camden, Gloucester or Collingswood, she would have been its president, its directeur general, et la femme important!

Nancy had woven some loose genealogical thread into the fabric of her identity and actively pursued her spirit de corps, and her corps’ spirit was decidedly French.   Out went the Irish lace, in came the gingham.   A perfectly wonderful apple pie, made with apples picked from an old orchard off of Barrington Avenue was no longer called a Dentdale Apple Pie; it was a French Apple Pie!  Beef stew?  Now it’s bouef bourguignon!  Imported sharp cheese from Ireland was replaced with brie (served warm of course).

She was an avid fan of I Love Lucy.  Lucy and Ricky moved to Connecticut and Nancy mistook their early American motif as Country French and redecorated ‘The Big House’ in Collingswood, and ‘The Shore House’ in Sea Isle City with things that were authentically French, or things that could be repurposed and pass as French.

Along with this French immersion, came some lessons in French language.   She had read many of the French authors (read their works in English), and had imagined that reading them in the original language would bring her closer to ‘her people’.    Lacking actual French people to speak to, she could only manage to scrape together a few French phrases.   Her ambition to read Flaubert in the original language was guillotined along with her hopes and dreams that she would one day be returned to the French throne from which her gene pool derived.   Realizing that her path to the French throne would meet with some resistance, Mary contented herself with being queen of the dynasty that existed in her mind.   Her closest friends were seen as ladies-in-waiting, and her enemies were treated as peasants.   In fact, Mary was one of the few people that I knew who truly believed in a peasant class.

As mentioned before, Nancy had an aversion to laziness. Laziness was for the peasants.   Nobility such as her and hers, had a responsibility to sustain and maintain the aristocracy. This could only be achieved by twenty-four-hour-a-day diligence.  Mary was most likely more manic than depressive in her disposition, but it can truthfully be said that her mania served her branch of the Barrington family quite well.   Mary was a whirling dervish of activity who was rarely found sitting.    Had she found a French language instructor who could give lessons while Mary whirled through her many activities, Mary would have mastered the French language.   Not only would she have demanded that everyone speak to her in French, she would have read only French literature, and eventually have written her own books (in French of course).

Mary did recognize that not everyone could keep up with her.   She did not expect her family and friends to work as hard as she did.   She did expect them to work hard though.   "Working hard" for la noblesse oblige did not require digging ditches, planting potatoes, or other peasant class work.  Mary  felt that  one must keep active either through sports, education, or participation in the arts.  In her mind, idle hands were the devil’s workshop, and so any languishing was met with a command to read a book, practice the piano, paint a painting (or the front porch).    If her command was to do some chore or activity; that chore or activity needed to be done “Tout suite”!

When Chitty Chitty Bang Bang premiered in 1968 Nancy found her theme song:  “Toot Sweets”.   “Toot Sweets” is four minutes and nineteen seconds of my life that I’ll never get back.   It is arguably one of the worst, most repetitive, stupid songs, I’ve ever heard.   Whenever Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is shown on television, I gird my loins because I know I’m going to spend the next forty or fifty days living with an earwig: “Toot Sweets”.

‘Toot Sweets’ is my bête noire because my nickname is Toot.   All of my classmates at the Kingston School (friends and enemies) plagued me with the humming or whistling of 'Toot Sweet's every time I passed by them.  Even  now (decades later) my ears are plagued with that tune when Chitty Chitty is shown on cable - TV.

I am Thomas William Barrington.  There is no other person named Thomas William Barrington.   There are many William Thomas Barrington’s, but they are all descended from John Jacob Barrington I, through his son William Thomas.

I am Frisky Barrington’s older brother and they call me Toot (The Other One – with a ‘T’ added on for flavor).  I am Jake and Carol’s first born.  There is only four and half years between me and my younger brother.  I'm sure that I was called Tommy, or Thomas, or possibly T.W. as an infant, but as soon as Frisky came along I was called Toot;  so I really don’t remember a time when I wasn’t referred to (lovingly) as Toot.  

I thought that Grandma Mary’s constant muttering of 'tout suite' was a symptom of early onset senility, or late onset Tourette’s.  It is the privilege of the first born to indulge in narcissism.     I was probably in my twenties when I realized that tout suite, wasn’t Toot-is-sweet. To be fair, first-born-narcissism is a nurtured (not natured) trait.   It’s also a well-earned indulgence and trade-off for all of the rules and regulations that are inflicted upon first-borns and then abandoned with the younger children in the brood. So I think I should be forgiven for thinking that tout suite, was too sweet.   I personally am an unforgiving person, but readily, and quickly forgive (or more likely forget) my own transgressions.  This too, is the privilege of the first born.  So sayeth The Toot! So shall it be!

My interest in things French is non-existent.   I’m a little more connected to my Irish ancestry through the Barrington lineage.   The Dolan’s were nice, but there were too few of them, and most of them lived on the western side of Philadelphia and they wouldn’t cross the Delaware to save their lives!  I had always thought that Frisky's French connection(s) were part of his life plan.   Only later did I discover that his puff pastry excursions to Paris were the result of events that could best be described as serendipitous.
 

Frankly, I’m not all that interested in things past.   Frisky was always the family historian.   Actually, I think of Frisky as more the family’s ‘hysterical’, than historian.   Frisky was the one who glued himself to the Aunts and Uncles at those Fourth-of-July reunions held in the Barrington Avenue home that I grew up in.  It is Frisky who has scraped out a more authentic version of the truth that the Barrington’s called history.   It is Frisky who stored all of the stories and then compared them to family documents; and it was Frisky who then applied a more humanistic template to events (both good and bad).  

The result of his analysis is interesting to many – but not to me.   I’m more of a here-and-now guy.   I have my opinions (some good, some bad) about my relatives and once I’ve formed an opinion I’m unlikely to revisit the topic for a change-of-mind. In this regard I am somewhat Catholic for an avowed Atheist.  

In my world, if you’ve done something bad, that bad thing cannot be offset by any number of ‘Hail Mary’s’ or ‘mea culpa’.     I have no purgatory in my spirit or soul and much like Grandma Mary; my (generally regarded) warm personality can throw more ice, more quickly, than Queen Elsa of Arrendale (Frozen).

I run hot and cold; often within the space of a few minutes.  My colleagues unanimously voted me the P.M.S. Poster Child for 1988, ’89,’ and ’90.   The streak would have continued, but I notified one and all that ‘if elected, I would not serve’.   I was thinking of Lyndon Johnson’s famous quote in 1968 when I said that.    

 

It was later that I amended General William Tecumseh Sherman’s original quote:

"If drafted, I will not run; if nominated, I will not accept; if elected, I will not serve” –General Sherman

“If drafted, I will not run: if nominated I will not accept: if elected, I WILL NOT BE YOUR BITCH!” –Thomas William Barrington (Toot).

 

 

The 1960s in Dentdale were wonderful times.   Although I moved out to Vincentown with my wife in 1978, I returned to Dentdale for the parades as often as I could.   Even after Jake and Carol sold the house, I would go first to the Dentdale parade, and then skip on down West Atlantic Avenue to enjoy the Denton Heights parade.

My wife Jandy had grown up in a big house on the White Horse Pike, and Mrs. Jane (my mother-in-law) stayed in that house for many years.   In fact, Jandy’s brother, Stan, never moved out of the house, not ever.

So after the parade, we’d stop by for a quick visit with Carol and Jake, and then spend the rest of the afternoon at the Jane’s house – waiting for the fireworks to start.

I married Jandy Jane whose father was Blane Jane.   The Jane family lived on the White Horse Pike in Denton Heights, and Blane had sired thirteen children in two marriages before I met and married Jandy.

To be really honest, I’m not a big fan of the Barrington family, and my marriage to Jandy was my way of escaping from my personal belief that the Barrington’s were the cause of all the evil in the world.   To me, Jandy and the four brothers that her mother gave birth to were the idyllic family.

I thought Blane Jane was amazing.   He had done well in life with his first family.   He was a Vice President in a printing company, and when he laid his eyes upon the corpulent and Rubenesque frame of the twenty two year old Priscilla Smith, he ditched his wife, his career, and his original family.

I had always seen Blane’s pursuit of ‘true love’ as the most honorable thing a man could do.   It was Frisky who unforgivably humanized Blane Jane as a predator whose principle character trait was an affinity for unsafe sex with a woman whose chances at love were at best minimal.

Jandy and I had been dating for several years.   We had both graduated from Denton Heights High in 1972.   Jandy was in the graduating class’ Top 10, and I was in the Bottom 200.   Her older brothers Mick and Stan had created a legacy in the school, and Jandy was very well liked.   We really didn’t ‘hook up’ until we started bumping into one another on campus at Glassboro State College.

She wanted to be an elementary school teacher, and I wanted to teach ‘shop’.    She had been victimized by all of her brothers, and I loved victimizing my brother.    Victimization requires two to tango, and it was (and is) this ‘victor/victim’ tango that Jandy and I danced for many years.

I needed to distance myself from Frisky, and some events that had occurred in my early teenage years.   Marrying Jandy, and becoming Blane’s ersatz ‘son’ - provided me with an escape route, and some plausible deniability about my show-me-yours-and-I’ll-show-you-mine adventures in the Boy Scouts.  I had participated in some harmless shenanigans in the Boy Scouts, and I decided to wash away my shame, by shaming others.   After all, ‘denial’ is not just a river in Egypt; it’s a great way to discredit someone’s memories about things best left forgotten.   Who better to foist my shame upon than my cake-baking, pink-piano-playing, little brother?

Jandy and I approached our graduations from Glassboro with eager anticipation.   I bought a little house out in Vincentown and asked Jandy to marry me.    Well, actually, I don’t think my proposal could really be compared to a Romeo and Juliet moment: more like a sitting-at-Taco Bell-why-don’t-we moment.

Wanting to impress Blane with my gentlemanliness I let it be known that I would formally request Jandy’s hand in marriage.   Blane’s blessing was akin to adoption papers for me.   With his blessing I would become one of The Walking Ids that Judy called a family.  

I too could be hyper-masculine.   I too could rise above my station in life, to be a union laborer at Acme Supermarkets and make $25 an hour to stack canned goods and sweep aisles.   I could easily have done that, but I choose an even better route: I would be a ‘teacher’.    This would make me smarter than Jandy’s mucho macho brothers, and I would benefits from whatever testosterone run-off came my way from associating with The Walking Ids.

I had planned to meet Blane at the Jane home on White Horse Pike on Friday afternoon.   Jandy and I stopped by Jake and Carol’s house to show off the newly purchased engagement ring.   Jake was (of course) not there.  Carol answered the ringing phone in the Barrington Avenue kitchen, and Priscilla Jane (Jandy’s Mom) gave her the news:  Blane had died only moments before.

‘Shit, fuck, damn!’ 

 Were my immediate thoughts.    My adoption would never be consecrated.

‘Shit, fuck, damn!’  

I had already rented the tuxedo for the wedding and was sure it was a non-refundable deposit.

‘Shit, fuck, damn!’

Jandy thought she might be pregnant so our wedding had to happen quickly, or my virginous Jandy’s reputation might be besmirched.   Even worse than the public learning that my virgin bride had been soiled, was the holier-than-thou attitude I needed to shame Frisky and his ilk.

Lastly, I thought:

‘Shit, fuck, damn!’

Now I have to be the one that tells Jandy that her Dad is dead.

‘Fuck, fuck, fuck………’

Well, I married Jandy two months later, and our first born didn’t arrive for another five years.    The wedding took place in the house that I purchased in Vincentown.   It was a small affair that might just as well have taken place in the Evoy Funeral Home on Station Avenue.   Even though Blane was long buried, his corpse loomed large at our wedding.  

A bride whose mother is dying or is recently deceased is totally screwed at her own wedding.  

A bride whose father has just recently died is exalted, and her martyrdom is secured.

The groom, who marries the bride whose father is recently deceased, is completely and totally screwed.   I could have stood on that make-shift alter with a I.V. drip of testosterone, and I still would not have been half the man that the on-looking crowd of Jane’s and Barrington’s needed me to be.

That I was wearing an aqua-marine colored tuxedo, with grey velvet collar and ruffled shirt didn’t help my de-masculinization.   I was rescued by the thought that Blane died because he knew his job as Jandy’s father was now finished.   Jandy had her knight-in-shining-armor (me), and he (Blane Jane) could now depart his corporeal form for some fun with the 72 virgins that he thought the Jehovah’s Witness promised at death.

Yes, towards the end, Blane had a tendency to confuse things, so Islam vs. Jehovah’s Witness……… it was either/eyether to him.   Priscilla was none-too-thrilled with the obvious glee he took in anticipation in his heavenly romp with 72 new, nubile, sex partners.   It bothered her that Blane lusted in his heart for other people,  but it kept him happy (and off of Priscilla’s worn loins) so she made no issue of the matter.

Like I said, I was screwed at my own wedding.    Most of the Jane’s did allude that Blane would be proud to have me as his son-in-law, and that his passing was to be considered a compliment to my love, honor, obey, and support his lovely Jandy.    I liked this story, and so did Jandy.   We tell our children this version of the truth.

At one of the funerals in the Barrington family, a cousin, or cousin-in-law remarked that Frisky had done his duty.   Frisky had witnessed Blane’s funeral and my wedding with an unusual silence.   Well, maybe he wasn’t silent.   Maybe I just didn’t care what he was saying, and had my selective hearing turned up high – which meant Frisky’s dulcet tones were not on my wave-length.   Frisky, was somewhat pissed off that I had clearly dumped our fraternal relationship to embrace the hyper-masculine, guaranteed-union-wage, I-still-wear-my-high-school-ring-even-though-I’m-forty-years-old Jane boys as my new-found brothers.

It had taken Frisky a few years to find the truthiness in Blane Jane’s deification, and in the end he stumbled upon an inconvenient truth:   Blane didn’t die knowing that Jandy would be well taken care of.   Blane died, because he could clearly see that I was not a suitable match for his lovely Jandy.  Even I knew that I wasn’t the man I needed to be, or that Jandy needed to be.   But why let that stop me from marrying the only chick that would probably ever be convincible enough to marry me?  Blane wasn’t in the mood for confrontation with Jandy or me, so he up and died.

Clearly, 72 virgins was going to be a lot more fun than watching a reenactment of the Capulet and Montagues jousting over Romeo & Juliet, so Blane picked himself up, detached himself from his body, and moved to heaven:  where I hope his 72 virgins were male……..

 

 

 

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