Crine

Al Kroesch (pronounced “kresh”), his wife Faye, and their weiner dog Willie, lived across the street and six doors down from me when I was growing up in the house on Cleveland Road in Glendale.  They were old-age retirees when I was a boy, and I trace my fastidiousness back to them.  I used to call it my “OCD” until I got an email from a young man who had read one of my posts and took me to task; he actually suffered quite badly from OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) and wrote movingly about how he couldn’t leave his house without turning the porchlight on-then-off a minimum of five times (or more depending on the first letter of the name of the month and its number of syllables).  He gave several examples of his obsessive-compulsive behavior, and then wrote, “don’t say you have OCD like you’re proud of it when what you mean is you’re a little bit fussy.”

Fair point.  I have since researched OCD, and while I do exhibit some of the traits of a sufferer, I mainly just like things neat and tidy and organized.  Remember that episode of Seinfeld where everybody thinks Jerry is gay because he’s neat and tidy and organized?  Well I’m neat and tidy and organized, and gay.  Maybe I’m a Jewish standup comedian with a sitcom!

And then on Mondays, I’d go around to all the houses and collect the used/read newspapers on a little cart that Mr. Kroesch made for me, and once a month my mom or dad would take me to the recycling center behind Levitz Furniture on San Fernando Road where I’d exchange all the newspapers I’d collected for cash (I was paid by the pound) which I’d immediately deposit in my Glendale Federal Bank account.

I wasn’t raking in huge amounts of money, but I saved up enough to buy my first stereo receiver, a Pioneer SX-580 (see above), a turntable, and Bose (yes, yes, after working for 17 years in audio post-production, I DO KNOW now that Bose sucks; remember our saying, “no highs and no lows, it must be Bose!”) speakers by the time I was 14. I really liked listening to music.

I rarely went inside Mr. Kroesch’s house (he wasn’t that kind of neighbor, though I always thought Mr. Cusack was), but I often stopped by to play with Willie in the backyard or visit Mr. Kroesch in his garage, where he was always building some contraption for his wife.  His garage was immaculate; not only did everything have a hook to hang on, ordered from small to large, or a drawer to sit in, with each drawer labelled as to its contents, but there wasn’t a cobweb or a spec of dust in sight. It was a cathedral to fastidiousness. I loved it.

Al drove a blue ’64 Chevy Nova and Faye drove a white ’63 Volkswagen.  He had hung two tennis balls on string from the ceiling in different places such that as each of them drove their different-sized cars into the garage they need only touch the tennis ball with their windshield and stop for their back bumpers to be perfectly aligned.  Genius!  Although right now there’s a staff person from my assisted living facility reading this and saying to themselves. “so that’s why he insists the lines in the pattern on the patio furniture all line up and point the same direction… it’s all starting to make sense now!”

I’m a little bit fussy.

Sometimes the little cart he made me to collect newspapers would need repairs.  I might show up with a broken wheel or the flat area where the papers went might have come loose from the underpinnings of the cart itself.  Mr. Kroesch always said the same thing when he looked at it or at anything that was broken, “well for crine in the beer.”

So one night, after my father got home from work, my mother gave him a bottle of beer as we watched tv in the den.  I said to him, “do you like crine in your beer daddy?”  He snapped at me, “I thought I told you to stay away from Mr. Maturi.”

Mr, Maturi, “Tony,” lived down the street and was on both my paper route and was part of my paper collection scheme.  Prior to this, I had started walking around in an exaggerated, very camp way, with my forearms up and perpendicular to my torso and my wrists limp with the fingers of my hands pointing straight down.  As I walked, I’d fling my hips in big swishing motions forward.  I couldn’t look any more feminine if I put on a pair of high-heeled mules, a chiffon house coat, and said, “hello darrrrrrrling” with a Breakfast At Tiffany’s cigarette holder dangling from my lips.  And when my father saw this, assuming I picked it up from Mr. Maturi (I had) who was well known in our neighborhood to be a bit light in his loafers, he had forbid me to have anything to do with Tony, other than delivering his paper and collecting it a week later.

“Mary, he’s doing it again,” he shouted to my mom preparing dinner in the kitchen.  When she came in, I defensively said, “I only asked him if he likes crine in his beer.”  She laughed.

You see my mom was born and raised on a farm in Minnesota in a deeply Catholic family, where they took the commandment not to take the Lord’s name in vain seriously.  So they had these little workarounds.  If you slipped up, like if you exclaimed “JESUS CHRIST!” when you were surprised all of a sudden, you immediately followed it with “…Mary, and Joseph and all his carpenter friends,” and thus avoided having to mention it in confession with Monsignor on Saturday.  Her favorite sister and my favorite aunt, Ann, used to say, “oh my Jove,” or “by Jove…,” substituting Jove, also known as Jupiter, the god of the sky and thunder, and king of the gods in ancient Roman religion and mythology, to avoid mentioning or offending the Catholic god or taking his name in vain.  My mom immediately realized that by ‘crine’ I meant ‘crying.’

As Mark Peters points out in All About Beer Magazine:

Used in Minnesota, this is one of many exclamations — like “For crying out loud!” and “Crikey!” — that are used to avoid saying Christ’s name. This kind of expression tends to have many variations, and DARE also records “For crying in the bucket!” and “For crying in the sink!”

I’d just misheard Mr. Kroesch.  It was a mondegreen.  She calmed my father down – no, Tony wasn’t turning his son gay!  I’d just misheard Mr. Kroesch.  Everything returned to normal in our house.  No more screaming.  No more accusing gay neighbors of recruiting impressionable young paperboys.  I continued to save up for my stereo.  Life went on…

But I never found out if my dad liked crine!