Even though Adrian and I lost touch after our eighth-grade graduation, I often remembered him whenever I went to the Museum of Science and Industry, the Chicago Loop, or walked past the Prudential Building. Because I fondly remembered him from time to time, I mentioned him in one of my blog entries, which is why I’m here today. His daughter Victoria searched for Adrian’s name on the internet and landed on one of my blog posts that mentioned Adrian Stanislovaitis. So, here I am. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to have one last encounter with Adrian and his loving family and friends.
Labas! I learned the Lithuanian greeting of “Labas!” from my Lithuanian friends in Chicago. I attended a Lithuanian church and school in Chicago’s Back of the Yards neighborhood, from kindergarten through eighth grade when I graduated.
I met Adrian at Holy Cross Grade School in the fourth grade. We were classmates from the fourth grade through the eighth grade. Unfortunately, our eighth-grade graduation in June of 1971 was the last time we saw each other.
We spent a lot of time together even though Adrian and his brother Renatas lived more than one mile away from the school. Most of the Holy Cross students lived only a few blocks away from the school. I lived two blocks away at 4405 S. Wood Street.
We spent a lot of time together during those years. We were also altar boys together. We had a lot in common. However, I was the oldest of six children, and I had never done much without at least one of my parents taking me somewhere. That all changed when I met Adrian. He was like the wiser older brother to me. Since he lived so far from the school, he was very independent and knew his way around Chicago.
In grade school, we had school days off for federal holidays like Columbus Day, George Washington’s Birthday, and Abraham Lincoln’s Birthday. When we were in the fifth grade, Adrian suggested that we go to downtown Chicago on our day off. I wondered who would take us there since our parents were working. Adrian said that we would take the bus downtown by ourselves! I had never heard of such a thing! Going downtown without an adult?! We were only twelve years old at the time.
Adrian met me at my house, and we took the Number 9 Ashland-Archer bus downtown. We went to the gift shops and ate at a restaurant downtown. The most memorable event for me involved going to the top of the Prudential Building downtown. We were truly impressed because it was the tallest building in Chicago at the time. Every time I go downtown and see the Prudential Building, I recall going up there with Adrian. Adrian always had great activity suggestions for us!
Once, we went to the Museum of Science and Industry by bus. He had all the logistics figured out. Since it was a school holiday, we had the day off from school. I said I couldn’t go because I had to watch my three younger brothers. Adrian said we could all go together. Since he lived on 55th and Wood Street, right off of Garfield Boulevard, he would walk to the corner of Ashland Avenue and Garfield Boulevard. My brothers and I would take the Ashland bus to Garfield Boulevard where we would transfer buses. We met Adrian on the corner and boarded the Garfield bus that took us directly to the museum. We spent the whole day there. And we spent all our money there, except for just enough bus fare for my brothers and me to be to take the Garfield bus to Wood Street where Adrian lived. And my brothers and I walked eleven blocks on Wood Street to get home. My brothers and I fondly remember that trip.
One day, Adrian was telling me how he saw a very funny movie over the weekend. He told me that on Friday and Saturday nights they showed comedies late at night. He told me I had to see The Marx Brothers in Duck Soup. He described the funny parts to me, and I was hooked. I would stay up late on weekends watching comedies. Duck Soup is still my favorite Marx Brothers movie.
Once when Adrian was at my house, my father took us to visit my uncle in Pilsen. My uncle was frying tortillas and baloney when we arrived. I was kind of embarrassed that Adrian had to see my father and uncle frying and eating baloney tacos. I couldn’t stand the smell of them. I only ate one bite of my baloney taco and said I didn’t like it. My father and uncle said they were really good. I told Adrian that he shouldn’t have any. But my father convinced him to try one. I was so embarrassed by my father and uncle offering a baloney taco to Adrian. But Adrian said the baloney taco was really good! In fact, he ate two more!
Adrian loved his planes, trains, and automobiles. When planes flew overhead, he would tell me everything he knew about the plane. He was able to identify every plane we saw and state the manufacturer of the plane and the model. I asked him why he knew so much about planes. He said that he would be a pilot someday. When I visited his house, he pulled out his Jane’s airplane books and showed me why he could recognize every plane in the sky.
I also learned about model trains from Adrian. Because of him, I started collecting N-gauge trains. Adrian also knew a lot about cars. If a car drove by us, he could tell me the year, make, and model of the car. He could identify a car just by looking at its taillights. He also like to build model cars. He got me to enter a hobby store contest for building car models.
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I was born in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, but my first language is Spanish. We moved to the Pilsen neighborhood in Chicago when I was about two years old. We only spoke Spanish at home. All our visitors spoke Spanish. As I recall, even my childhood playmates spoke Spanish. When we went to mass at our neighborhood church, the priest said mass in Spanish. I believe everyone around me always spoke Spanish until I started school. When I watched television, it was in English. Occasionally, I would go shopping with my parents where I heard languages other than Spanish. However, the only language I understood was Spanish.
Since I grew up in the neighborhood called the Back of the Yards, I heard many different foreign languages along with English. When I played outside with the other children, I never understood what they said if they spoke a language other than Spanish. Although I often heard English, I did not learn to speak any English until I entered Kindergarten. It was the sudden immersion method since I had never spoken more than a few words of English at a time. Suddenly, for hours at a time, I only heard English, and the teacher expected me to respond in English. We learned nursery rhymes and songs that used archaic English words. When I attempted to use some of the new English words that I learned from the nursery rhymes or songs outside of school, other children would laugh at me. For example, I was ridiculed when I called a female classmate a lassie. I learned “lassie” from the song, “Have you ever seen a lassie go this way and that way?”
I attended a Lithuanian Catholic grade school called Holy Cross Grade School in the Back of the Yards neighborhood. All of the priests and most of the nuns spoke Lithuanian and English. We were always conscious of the fact that our neighborhood was the setting for the Lithuanian family in the novel The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. During school hours, the nuns stressed the importance of learning English and we were not allowed to speak our native tongue whether it was Spanish, Polish, or Lithuanian. We had to master English if we were to function in a Catholic and American society.
What helped me learn English was the constant repetition of songs and prayers. Rote memorization was the norm. I improved my English vocabulary by writing down important words several times. This constant repetition helped me learn English. Every morning we went to church to attend mass in Latin before school. We prayed a “Hail Mary” before class in the morning. In the afternoon, we prayed the “Our Father” and the recited the “Pledge of Allegiance” before class. I often did not understand the lessons taught at school. When the teachers instructed the students to complete a task, I was usually the last one to comply because I didn’t understand the command in English and would belatedly obey it by watching what the other students did. Sometimes, my classmates made fun of me because I was slow to follow the instructions. Occasionally, the teacher would correct my English and students would make fun of me after class.
At home, my parents insisted that I speak English so that they could also learn English. The more English I spoke, the more Spanish I forgot. In the end, my parents realized how difficult it was to learn English, so they never really learned it well enough to become fluent. We ended up speaking these bilingual conversations where I spoke English to my parents and they spoke Spanish to me. Of course, certain terms were not translated from their original language. We often spoke in a mixture of English and Spanish: Spanglish. Once I knew how to speak English well enough to get by, I became the official family translator at age eight; I had to translate whenever we went out, and we needed directions or my parents had to conduct some sort of business. I was always self-conscious about the way in which I spoke English because of my Spanish accent.
When I was in the fourth grade, I felt embarrassed by the way I spoke English. I wanted to improve my fluency, so I read books to feel more comfortable with English. When I got my first library card, I spent a lot of time at the library reading books. I also borrowed a lot of books to read at home. I really loved the joke books because I learned the multiple meanings of many words. For example, “What did the ocean say to the beach? Nothing, it just waved.” These jokes and riddles helped realize that words had multiple meanings. This helped me to increase my English vocabulary while I also learned to enjoy the humor of the English language.
Unfortunately, I still had trouble comprehending the classroom lessons in the fourth grade. When we went to Mexico for two months during that school year, I had lost the little English fluency I had. In Mexico, I realized that I did not speak Spanish as effortlessly as my relatives in Mexico. When I played with my cousins, they made fun of my speaking that was part English, part Spanish. When I returned to Chicago, I realized that my classmates still made fun of my English. I did not speak either language very well. I also learned that I would fail the fourth grade because I missed two months of school due to our extended Mexican vacation. Since the teacher said that I failed in part because of my problems with English, I have always felt self-conscious about my English.
As I grew older, I wanted to be bilingual in English and Spanish and speak both languages fluently, like a native speaker. I often tried to read, write, and speak English and Spanish whenever possible. When I was in the Marine Corps, I studied English grammar books extensively. I read in Spanish whenever I came across something written in Spanish. However, it was not until I attended the University of Illinois Chicago that I felt that I really learned English and Spanish. To this day, I feel that I speak English with a Spanish accent and Spanish with an English accent.
Ted Haydon has coached countless track and field athletes at the University of Chicago since 1950, including many Olympic athletes, average, and not-so-average runners. Ted was elected to the Track and Field Hall of Fame for his promotion of track and field through an open club and open meets, thanks partially to Hal Higdon’s urging as a graduate student.
I felt Ted was truly concerned about me, a runner whom he hardly knew except by sight. I later learned that he took personal interest in everyone who ran for him. He coached me to new PR’s of various sorts. My favorite was my stand-up comedy performance at the annual University of Chicago Track Club Dinner in 1984, with George Young as the guest speaker.
Once on the way home from a track meet, a two-and-a-half-hour drive, someone in the van began telling jokes; Ted told a few himself. Then I told some. Everyone was surprised that the quiet guy around the track knew so many jokes. When they questioned me, I had to admit that I had read numerous joke books since I was in grade school. I also told them how I had performed stand-up comedy and would soon be appearing in a comedy revue.
At the next workout, I asked Ted what I should do.
“How about some stand-up comedy at the track club dinner this year?” he asked.
I wanted to turn him down, but a few months earlier I decided to accept every opportunity to perform standup comedy.
“How about if I do five to ten minutes of comedy?” I asked.
“But you have to tell jokes about track and field,” Ted said.
“Okay,” I said, trying to sound enthusiastic about the whole thing despite of not having a single track and field joke in my repertoire. “I’ll write something for the dinner.”
“Where have you performed before?” he asked.
“The Comedy Cottage, Comedy Womb, and Who’s on First.”
“I figure if I gave Dick Gregory a start,” he said, “I could help you out a little.”
I began telling members of the track club I would be performing for the dinner. Since it was only two weeks away, I felt nervous because I had no track and field jokes. I recruited Mark Wagner, the club clown who gave a humorous slide show at his house party, and his sidekick Chris Coley. Maybe they would help me write some running jokes. I thought of a few ideas I could develop, but somehow, they did not make me feel comfortable. I needed better material.
I told Pat Palmer, one of the track club members, that I would be performing at the track club dinner. He immediately began talking about Dick Gregory’s comedy debut at the dinner. “I was a freshman,” Pat said, “when I met him at the dinner in January of 1960. He was really funny. I had never heard of him before, but after that dinner he became famous.”
That was when I began to feel enormous pressure. When I performed in night clubs, I didn’t care if I bombed because I would never see the audience again anyway, but here I knew about half the audience. I never performed well before people who knew me. Was I ever nervous!
The reason I told everyone I would perform for the dinner was to put pressure on myself in order to accomplish what I had set out to do. Once enough people knew about my plans, I had to perform. Many club members were discovering for the first time my background in comedy. In real life, I don’t come across as a funny person. So, people are surprised when they learn that I’m a standup comedian.
Now I had one minor problem. I didn’t have any running jokes. Okay. One major problem. Comedians without jokes are not funny. I wouldn’t be the exception. Mentally, I began writing a running monologue for the track club dinner. When I told Mark Wagner and Chris Coley the next day, they were willing to help me write some jokes. I told them some ideas I had for jokes. Not only did they like them, but they guessed the punchline before I even said it. To jokes I had written! This would have upset other comedians, but they would be the perfect collaborators since we thought similarly. We agreed to meet the next Wednesday during a track meet. I worried that I did not see them at the workouts the next Monday or Tuesday. I wrote jokes in case I did not see them again before the dinner, which was only a week away now.
I had set a schedule for myself: the first week would be dedicated to writing material and the second week to rehearsing. So when I didn’t see my collaborators at the track, I thought I would get behind schedule.
In the meantime, I saw Ted every day. Whenever I asked him to tell me my workout, he would ask me how my comedy routine was coming along. I always told him I would be ready by the night of the dinner. I wondered if he sensed my insecurities. Ted had always seemed to know when I doubted myself. Once, he told me to run two quarters at my 800 pace, which I would race two days later. I asked how fast I should run.
“Run them under sixty seconds,” Ted said.
My PR for the 400 was sixty-one, so I didn’t think I could do his workout. He did not pressure me to try, although he did encourage me to do them. I wouldn’t have tried without his urging. I ran the first one in 58.2 and the second in 60.0. We were both pleased by the workout. But I was more surprised than pleased!
Prior to the track club dinner, Ted never stopped telling jokes or playfully insulting his runners, a favorite habit of his. I always enjoyed the good laughs Ted provided.
The Wednesday night I was meeting with my collaborators finally arrived. I was relieved to see Mark and Chris at the track meet. Since I had last talked to them, I had written five minutes of material, all of it untested on stage. There are no night clubs where comedians can try out running humor. We were to write during the meet, but we were too nervous because we were both racing. Following Ted’s workouts, I ran a PR of 2:02.8 in the 800. We both ran great races, so we thought we’d celebrate by having a beer at the Woodlawn Tap, otherwise known as Jimmy’s, the infamous bar on the corner of 1172 East 55th Street in Hyde Park.
I hardly considered the conditions conducive to creative thinking, but we began our comedy writing session there anyway. I told him what jokes I had in mind and how I would like to present them. Mark liked the section I had written about Jarmila Kratochvilova. At least we were off to a great start. After I told him the jokes about Ted Haydon, which were actually putdowns on me, we wrote jokes about various members of the track club, although there was nothing too caustic. By the end of our session, including interruptions from friends who asked us what we were doing, we had doubled my material. I really liked the jokes by Mark and Chris. Now all I had to do was polish them and rehearse them. Listening to some of my material, my friend Jim Harmon reworded some jokes which were not sharp enough. I trusted his judgment because he had performed standup comedy for about a year.
I rehearsed the routine, but did not memorize the jokes until four days before the dinner; I was afraid I might forget my lines by the night of the dinner·. As I rehearsed, flashbacks of bombing on stage kept haunting me. Determined to succeed, I worked at my routine that had added up to ten minutes.
Two days before the dinner, Ted asked me if my comedy routine was prepared, I told him I was ready to perform. He asked me in the same tone he used to ask his runners if they were ready to race. He told me a few quick jokes that made me laugh.
I was nervous the night of the dinner. The sight of Hal Higdon at the bar made me jittery even though the story about my bombing would not appear in The Runner. As I drank a beer to relax my nerves, Ted approached me.
“Are you ready?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. “When will I go on?”
“Right after the jugglers, Zeus Preckwinkle and Mike Nair,” he said. “I’ve billed you as Third City Comedy.”
I laughed. Third City Comedy struck me as funny. I hoped to think of a funny response when I was introduced. Mark, my collaborator, was nervous for me. He could not think of a funny response to the introduction.
I was glad Ted did not wish good luck in the traditional show biz way by saying, “Break a leg.” He might make a habit of telling me that before every race.
The jugglers were great. I was apprehensive when I heard my name. Walking to the podium, I realized this was the most prepared I had ever been for a comedy performance. There were no excuses for bombing tonight.
I felt like a fool when I ad libbed something in response to the intro and no one responded. I stuttered my opening lines. The audience, my largest ever to that point in my comedy career, stared at me expectantly. A joke in which I complimented Carl Lewis only received a chuckle. I thought I was in trouble when I stuttered into the Jarmila Kratochvilova jokes, but then I pronounced her name correctly. I was shocked! I got a few laughs as I worked my way toward the punchline. After delivering the line that should get the Big Laugh, there was a slight pause. A slight pause that cause me to panic inside. A pause only a comedian would notice. But then I got the Big Laugh. Getting the Big Laugh rattled me a little. Looking at the audience I saw everyone laughing very loudly, too. I tried to spot Hal Higdon, but I could not find him in the audience. In the meantime, everyone applauded. I had never been applauded before. “What do I do now?” I asked myself. I looked back at the audience as if I were used to getting this sort of response. I stopped stuttering from that point on.
I continued to get laughter and applause. When I reached the Ted Haydon section of jokes, I looked at him to study his reactions. I planned to move on to another topic if Ted looked offended. I assumed he would not mind.
“I remember when I first met Ted Haydon,” I said. “He asked me what high school I ran for. I was insulted because at that time I was twenty-six. Laughter. “I said, ‘I’m not in high school.’”
“So then Ted said, ‘What high school will you run for?’ Laughter and applause.
“I wanted to join the track club and Ted said, ‘Membership is a state of mind.’ Laughter. When I told him how fast I ran…” Laughter. He said, ‘In that case, membership is a state of mind. And a small contribution.” Laughter and applause.
Ted seemed pleased. These were the jokes I had written. I received a better response from Mark’s jokes about Ted. I continued until I finally ran out of material about fifteen minutes later. The laughter and applause had expanded my routine in a good way. I returned to my seat and chugged a beer quickly, feeling relieved now that the pressure was off me. The podium remained empty for about two minutes–or at least it felt that long. Finally, Ted approached the microphone and said, “Dave’s a tough act to follow!”
I could not help feeling proud of myself. After the dinner, people complimented me on my performance. Many were surprised to discover I was a comedian. Some of the older club members compared me with Dick Gregory. I was flattered to hear that some liked me better. To think I might not have performed this well had it not been for Ted’s encouragement, the same encouragement that allowed me to run a sub-five-minute mile.
I shook Ted’s hand. “Thanks for letting me perform,” I said.
“You’re very funny,” Ted said.
Ted Haydon sure knows how to make his runners perform up to their potentials on and off the track.
I love reading. Especially now that I’m older and have plenty of time to read. I even read candy wrappers lying on the floor.
In grade school, I enjoyed reading in the first and second grades since the sentences were usually two or three words long and the books were very short. Later, I loved reading when the class took turns reading aloud. I remember we read Washington Irving, Hans Christian Andersen, and Mak Twain. I can honestly say that I enjoyed the readings and still partially remember Ichabod Crane, the skaters on the frozen Dutch canals, and the celebrated jumping frog of Calaveras County.
Other than comic books, I didn’t do much reading outside of class. But I did buy books from the Scholastic Book Club through school. The only book I remember buying was Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy in the seventh grade. I liked the book cover artwork and the title intrigued me. However, I didn’t actually read it then, but I kept it along with my other prized possessions. Although I did willingly read two books that I borrowed via U.S. mail from Divine Heart Seminary when I was in the eighth grade: Fighting Father Duffy and Father Damien. This was the seminary’s recruiting tool. Father Duffy was a World War II chaplain and Father Damien was a missionary who worked with lepers.
In high school, I never read any of the assigned readings. I was an unhappy teenage student because I was not allowed to attend the high school of my choice. I refused to read anything for homework. My freshman year of high school, Mrs. Shaefer kept after class to tell me that I had to start reading the class texts. I found the class discussions interesting, but not interesting enough to motivate me to read Hemingway, Fitzgerald, or Steinbeck.
I remember my junior year we were assigned to read Macbeth for homework. Of course, I refused to read it. However, the teacher held captivating discussions about the play and William Shakespeare. I was almost tempted to read Macbeth. Then, she announced that we were going on a field trip to see the movie version of Macbeth. Luckily, I was able to follow the storyline thanks to the class discussions. I really enjoyed the movie. I still think of it from time to time. In fact, I have read and re-read Macbeth several times since high school.
So, I didn’t read any assignments in high school, not even Macbeth. I came oh so close to reading Macbeth on my own. It would be years before I finally read it. I didn’t do much homework once I turned eighteen and started working at Derby Foods making Peter Pan peanut butter. I eventually dropped out of high school because I couldn’t manage working the midnight shift and attending classes right after work.
Plus, my high school counselor would not allow me to take the ACT or SAT exams required to apply to universities. He told me I wasn’t smart enough and i would only be wasting my time. Looking back now, I realize that this was a blatant case of racial discrimination. The counselor asked me how I planned to pay for college tuition. I didn’t know. When I told my mother that I wanted to go to college, but that the counselor wouldn’t let me take the college exams, she asked me how I planned to pay for tuition. I didn’t know. My mother also told me, “You already have a job! You don’t need to go to college.” So, I continued working my factory job. I was in the class of 1974, and the class of 1975, and the class of 1976. And I eventually dropped out.
The next year, my friends Jim, Ted, and Nick needed a ride to check out some potential universities they could attend. The had made appointments at Bradley University, University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana, and the University of Chicago. Since I was still working a factory job, I had a new car and was able to take them to several universities in Illinois. I worked the midnight shift then, I was free in the day time to take them. I got by on very little sleep back then.
On the way there, they wondered how they would pay for college tuition. I wondered, too. Well, each university counselor told them not to worry about tuition. If they were accepted, the money would come from somewhere in the form of student loans, scholarships, or grants. No one ever told me about student loans, scholarships, or grants. Why did they provide my friends with this useful information and not me? Well, I forgot to mention that they were white and I was Mexican.
So, I didn’t go to college and continued working in the peanut butter factory. I always felt embarrassed about being a high school dropout. Therefore, I decided to educate myself. By reading. Reading all the books I was supposed to read in high school. So, I read Steinbeck, Hemingway, and many other assigned readings that were long overdue. Eventually, I came across my old copy of Far from the Madding Crowd. It felt rather thick and intimidating, but I was determined to educate myself by reading. I continued reading over the years. If I liked an author, I would attempt to read all their books. This included: Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Kurt Vonnegut, Herman Hesse, J.D. Salinger, and yes, also Thomas Hardy. Lest we forget, Thomas Hardy coined the phrase, “Lest we forget.”
I decided to educate myself by reading. In the Marines, I bought the Great Books from Encyclopedia Britannica and read them all. I read voraciously. Eventually, I came full circle to Thomas Hardy. I planned to read all his books. They were all very moving, uplifting, and depressing all at once. However, the one book that really seemed to be about me was Jude the Obscure! The protagonist, due to his social circumstances, never obtained a formal university education. Just like me! So, he decided to educate himself by reading and studying books on his own. Just like me!
Spoiler alert! Jude Fawley does educate himself, but he never succeeds without a formal university degree. I found myself in a similar situation when I applied for the position of running coach at a university. I had all the necessary qualifications to coach, but without a university degree, I would not make a good role model for the students. And I was a published writer at the time. All for naught!
Well, I was finally able to get a formal university education with several degrees all they up to and including my Ph.D. The tragedy of Jude Fawley inspired me to go back to school. Every time I read Jude the Obscure, I recall my factory days reading books while I was on break. I realize now that I was also the victim of the social class barriers. Just like Jude Fawley.
Chicago USA 