THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, August 4, 1995 TAG: 9508030216
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 07 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Over Easy
SOURCE: Jo-Ann Clegg
LENGTH: Medium: 77 lines
The last time I had to put up with such miserable summer weather I ended up sharing an 8-by-12-foot room in a 13th floor New York City apartment with a 3-foot-tall dummy sporting a bow tie and a head filled with sawdust.
All by himself he wasn't much of a conversationalist, but I was delighted to have his company just the same. Mainly because by sharing his room I also had what was a very scarce commodity in 1951: a window air conditioner.
That was the summer my family moved from Maine to Long Island in the middle of one of the worst heat waves in the history of the New York area.
For days the temperatures soared and so did the humidity. When the thermometer read 90, the humidity hit 95. When the temperature hit 95, the humidity hit 195, or so it seemed.
We moved into a pleasant house on a tree-shaded street in Great Neck, just a few blocks from the point where Long Island's Nassau County met the New York City Borough of Queens. The beauty of the Island's North Shore was lost on me, however.
Between the terrible heat and the trauma of moving away from kids I had known since kindergarten, I was acutely, supremely miserable.
Then Cousin Nettie came to my rescue. A large, kindly, no-nonsense person, it was she who kept her finger on the family's pulse. She was the first to arrive, gift in hand, when there was a new engagement ring, a new home or a new baby.
She had left Maine in the 1920s to pursue a career in the big city and had done well. By the time we moved to New York, she was living in a tiny jewel of an apartment on East 70th Street between Third and Lexington avenues. Except when she was house- or apartment-sitting, something she did frequently for family members who left town during the summer heat.
That miserable summer of 1951 she had moved into the apartment of Dorothy, a third cousin two or three times removed. Dorothy had married Paul Winchell, a young ventriloquist who got his start in radio but whose career took off with the advent of television.
His dummy, Jerry Mahoney, was a cute little guy and I was always proud to say that both Paul and Jerry were members of our family.
When Nettie came out to Great Neck to bring a housewarming gift she took one look at me and made a quick decision. ``That child is going back into the city to stay with me before she drops dead from this heat,'' she declared. ``The Winchells have air conditioners in their bedrooms and she looks like she hasn't slept in a month.''
That evening Nettie and I took the Long Island Railroad into the city and went straight to the apartment.
``I think the most comfortable place for you would be in Jerry's room,'' Nettie declared, leading me to a room just down the hall from the master bedroom where she would be sleeping.
When she opened the door, blessedly cool air, pouring from a noisy machine mounted in the window, surrounded me. So did something else.
Jerry Mahoney. A whole gaggle of Jerry Mahoneys. His heads, three or four of them in varying states of completion, sat neatly on a workbench. A dozen or more of his bodies, each in a different outfit, hung from a pegboard. A single whole Jerry sat, well, dummylike, on a small chair in the corner.
The room in which I would be sleeping was the place where Paul, an incredibly talented craftsman as well as a fine entertainer, painstakingly created all versions of his little wooden sidekick.
For several nights I slept soundly in Jerry's room. During the day I explored nearby Central Park, fell madly in love with Manhattan and developed a crush on the handsome young doorman.
One morning the air was clear and crisp so I packed my overnight bag, took a cab back to Penn Station and boarded the train for Great Neck.
Paul and Dorothy separated a few years later and not long after that Cousin Nettie passed away. I never again saw Jerry in person.
It's only when I run across a news item about Paul's humanitarian works or when I'm faced with a summer as miserable as this one that I recall the few days I spent sleeping soundly in the presence of a little creature with a table full of heads waiting to be attached to a wall full of bodies. by CNB