Jack 'I' Stillerman
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Jack
known on the street as Jake and Boychik to his ma, was born on the Fourth of
July on Chicago’s Southside, smelling distance from the stockyards.
Yankee Doodle Boychik starts in
1919. Jack is four and living packed
“like herring in a barrel” behind Pa’s shoe store. The struggles and triumphs, poignant and funny, to become a real
American boy are portrayed through his eyes.
The story takes the reader through forty chapter stories to his bar
mitzvah when he invites the neighbors to their first Jewish party.
It
was the magic time of radio and Babe Ruth, of Paul Whiteman’s band serial
movies on Saturday morning. Jake
confronts his immigrant Ma’s old country values, convincing her that there is
time in his day for sports as well as study and its all right for a Jewish boy
to play the sax in a jazz band, rather than a fiddle in a concert hall.
This
is not the usual coming of age story.
In Yankee Doodle Boychik, a
Jewish boy grows up in a functional
family. Discipline is tempered by
Ma’s love and conflicts resolved without sacrificing religious principle.
By
the last chapter, the reader will have laughed and cried with Jake as he
pursues the wins and losses of his dreams.
JACK I STILLERMAN is the author of A Chicago Memoir-Yankee Doodle Boyhood, winner of National Legacy Award, published in variety of literary journals. He is graduate of Northwestern University Dental School. He lives in California.
Every day I watched Ma tear the pages off the new 1920 calender. I believed that’s how she made tomorrow happen. I wanted to see the word July with the number 4 that I’d circled in red with my crayon. It meant I would be five and could go outside by myself.
While I was waiting for the magic time to come, my skinny Ma got fat, and Pa took her to Englewood Hospital. A week later she came home and I had a new baby brother Yossel.
Now that Ma was busy with my baby brother she didn’t come with me at night when I had to pee. Holding my wee-wee I stumbled alone in the dark and stood by the toilet, with my pajama’s drooped around my ankles. Suddenly I heard whispers.
"Pish, pish, pish," then the splashing of water.
I turned and by the light from the street lamp shining through the high window, I saw Ma. She had turned on the sink faucet, like she used to do before baby Yossel came, to help me go. It felt good to see her.
"Jakeleh, I heard you sniffling in the hall. You still have your cold." She kissed me on the top of my head. "Yossel is asleep, and I wanted to make sure you’re all right."
After I was finished, and shook off the last drop, Ma helped me button my pajamas and walked me to my bedroom. The baby started to wail and she rushed off.
I had just climbed into bed when she came back carrying Yossel, shooshing him quiet.
"Jakeleh," Ma sat on the side of the bed, rocking and patting the baby. "I hope the baby doesn’t catch your cold and gets sick, because tomorrow is his bris."
"Ma, what’s a bris?"
"It’s an important happening for every Jewish boy when he’s eight days old."
"I’m Jewish! I’m Jewish! So can I come?"
"No. You have a cold and besides you had your bris four years ago. Now it’s your brother’s turn."
"So if I had," I asked, "what happened?"
Ma gave me a funny look.
"Well--uh well, a Jewish boy baby has a little skin cut off of his wee-wee. It’s God’s command."
I reached down under the covers, and felt my wee-wee. It was so itty-bitty. Where could they have cut off a piece? "Ma, show me where."
"Enough already. I’ve got to put Yosseleh back in his crib. Don’t worry so much. Time to go to sleep. See you in the morning."
I never forgot the dream I had that night. A fat man with a heavy red beard spread out over his jacket, wearing a black yarmulke on his red curly hair, was chasing me with scissors and knives clutched in his fists. I awakened sweating from the nightmare, just after the bearded man, waving a piece of my wee-wee said, "Now you’re Jewish."
After my breakfast, Ma told me there would be no story time, because she had to get ready for the bris. She took me to my room, brushed my hair, and dressed me in my Osh B’Kosh overalls and gave me a stack of my favorite books.
"Be a good boy," she kissed me on the forehead and wiped my nose. "Now be sure and stay in your room until I call you," and left, softly closing the door.
