The Djinn's preface: My father had a complex relationship with his parents, oft expressed in the pronouncement, "My parents were peasants". This may seem harsh, but what little I can glean from the sparse stories of his childood as the second of 7 surviving children, his father was a bit of a brute. At age ninety something, he dead for many decades, my Aunt Georgia expressed a lingering fear as if somehow he could still reach her with his disapproval. He died before I was born. My mother and father married secretly in about 1946. My mother failed the test of ethnicity. She was not Greek. In fact, she was full blooded, first generation, Irish. This was anathema to my grandfather, although his own wife was first generation Italian. While the marriage remained a secret, my grandfather had an entire dinner in which he sought to introduce a nice Greek girl to Dad who painstakingly served them. When the marriage became a matter of family publicity, and Dad introduced her to the paterfamlias, she was given a mitigation because she wore an outfit that covered her charms from head to toe. Thus, at least, she was a "good girl". But my father had even less affection for his mother, though he always behaved in an honorable fashion toward her. She died in old age. One of his stories related to her was how she chased his younger sibling, Tony, around with a kitchen knife, when he committed some child's mischief. She was pregnant at the time.
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Mr. Randolph was one of my father's favorite customers. It was not that he was a big spender. In fact, he was one of Papa's elite clientele whose nature was never to carry cash, or anything heavy. "Put it on my account and have the boy bring it up," was the usual interaction. In my preteen years, I was the "boy".
Mr. Randolph was a person who exuded elegance, although somewhat worn. He was carefully attired. He carried a can and wore a felt hat, tan in color. This was an accessory he wore constantly, regardless of the sartorial conflict. To my younth eyes he himself seemed somewhat worn, and probably not one of the affluent denizens of the neighborhood.
He was friendly, and garrulous, and whether or not he bought something, he frequently became engaged in philosophical discuss wion my father. Papa addressed him as Professor Randolph, although he was, in fact, of more pedestrian accomplishments. My father applied his own value to degrees of accomplishment. "Professor" was not a title of reverence to him. It was a challenge, an invitation to a joust. He felt sure that only the vagaries of early deprivation separated him from the heights of learning.
I suspect that it was Mr. Randolph who introduced my father to an aphorism he often employed, one that varied slightly in syntax, "Stay on your feet and limitations" or "Lay on your feet and limitations." In either version, it became his paradigm of universal application.
When he was confronted by the logic of an adversary, he resorted to a store of illustrative fables. His most pointed rebuttal lay in the story of a man who was sitting on the breanch of a tree and sawing it from the inside. A "Professor" who was passing cautions him that if he continues in this fashion, he will surely fall. The man, who always responds with pique, responds, "Professor, if you are so smart, tell me when I am going to die." I do not mean to disparage my father, but I temporize.
It seems that in one of the many dissertations with Randolph, the subject of a magic substance, called "Ergosterol" was revealed to him. Ergosterol is an enzyme that humans possess beneath the skin that produces Vitamin D, but only when exposed to the sun. This particular revelation had evil consequences of some severity for me.
On the next day after the epiphany, he directed Mr. Hagiopolis, his employee, to take me to Long Beach for a sunbath. I was, consquently, severely burned and blistered. My mother, not as yet instructed in the salutary benefits of Ergosterol, opined that the event was caused by the "matia", the evil eye cast upon me by her sisters in law.
The patriarch, my father, inspected the areas of the holocaust on my body and was pleased with the results. He was of the philosophy that medicine that tastes bad is good; the discomfort of minor burns had to be equally beneficial.
He directed Mr. Hagiopolis to bring me back to Long Beach the next day.
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