How Come Nothing Ever Kills Granddad?

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This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

© 2009 Patrick M. Sheridan. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 9/18/2009

ISBN: 978-1-4490-2300-3 (e)

ISBN: 978-1-4490-2298-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4490-2299-0 (hc)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2009908944

Bloomington, Indiana

Contents

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

EPILOGUE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

How come nothing ever kills granddad?

                                 Abby Allan, age 11

PROLOGUE

This autobiography was primarily written for my children, to give them a better understanding of where I came from, and to tell them about my Dad and my older brother, Paul, who both died before my kids had a chance to know them.

I also hope that the book might bring back fond memories for them, as well as my other siblings and their families.

I started writing notes for this book decades ago, and to the best of my recollection, this is how it happened.

Most of all, I thank God for letting me live long enough to write it.

CHAPTER ONE

THE EARLY YEARS

Less than a year before I was born, Lou Gehrig said; I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth. He died on June 2, 1941, shortly after my first birthday. Since Gehrig’s death, I have been, by every reasonable measuring stick I can think of, the luckiest guy in the world.

Everyone can point to moments in their life when they have cheated death, overcome a serious illness or injury, or narrowly missed a fatal accident. When that occurs to us, we generally consider ourselves lucky, or blessed, or however our beliefs dictate we should regard such an event. If we happen to experience more than one such event, we begin to feel we are damn lucky or very blessed. In my case, there have been so many such events that I know I just shouldn’t still be here. My life has lasted much longer and been infinitely more fun and rewarding than I ever dreamed it would be, or believed it deserved to be.

For a long time, I thought I had been a beneficiary of the old theory, Only the good die young, which might explain my extraordinary lucky streak. But since I am writing this story in my seventieth year, I don’t think that quite explains it any longer. Not that I’ve finally turned good.

I’ve finally concluded that God, who must possess the greatest sense of humor in the universe, has decided to play with me as someone might play with a lab rat, (I don’t mean that in a bad way). He just wanted to see how many diseases, near misses, and usually fatal problems He could send my way, and watch how I got out of them. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining, because I’ve not suffered any permanent damage during these gifts. They just happen, and then God grants me a solid, and my life goes on as if nothing ever happened in the first place.

When my granddaughter, Abby, recently asked her mother, How come nothing ever kills granddad? as I was scheduled to have two more surgeries on two more organs to attack two more newly discovered cancers. I just laughed. Just because I’ve already had twice as many lives as your average cat doesn’t mean God is ready to throw in the towel yet, and neither am I. Someday, something will kill me, but only God knows when, and he doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to let me know. I still have stories to write, countries to visit, movies to see, and people to make laugh; so I’m in absolutely no hurry to write a final chapter to this story.

I was born near Detroit, Michigan in the spring of 1940, which turned out to be an interesting year to enter life in America. Franklin D. Roosevelt was reelected to a third term as President that year and we were at the tail end of the Great Depression. Roosevelt ran on a platform that he had kept us out of World War II, while the entire civilized world except for Germany and Japan begged us to enter the war. Reelecting Roosevelt seemed like a good idea at the time since he had a great first term, a pretty good second term, and he seemed to like being president. It turned out to be such a bad idea, that we later amended the Constitution so that no one could ever do it again.

In my own little world, I became the second child of Paul and Frances Sheridan. I had an older brother, Paul, who would become my best friend. We were your average All-American perfect-size family, Mom, Dad, and two kids. This was going to be great.

I was born with a bad heart, a condition called patent ductus arteriosis. There is an artery in the heart of a fetus that leads back to the pulmonary artery. It closes when a baby is born. Mine didn’t close. This causes a murmur and a relatively short life span unless it can be closed. This wasn’t a viable option in 1940, as heart surgery was just in its primitive stages.

My Dad was born and raised in Boston. His father had died when he was two years old, and he remained an only child. His mother raised him with some help from his Uncle Mike. I never heard him talk about his Dad, and I doubt that he could remember him. I had the best Dad any kid could ever have, but he was definitely old school. He whacked Paul and me on the ass the moment we stepped out of line, but we were both smart enough to avoid getting caught for most of our transgressions.

His mother was a first generation American, and a registered nurse, with a very strong opinion on every subject that ever came up. She loved America, Boston, the Irish, the Democratic Party, Catholics, and the Boston Red Sox, not necessarily in that order. My grandmother passed all those opinions on to my Dad and he passed them on to me.

As a teenager, he did the usual things that teenagers did in Boston. On Election Day, he jumped on the back of a truck with all his pals, and went from precinct to precinct, voting under the names of deceased Democrats for President Roosevelt and Mayor Curley. Years later, while I was still a kid, I asked him how he felt about that. He said it didn’t bother him, because they were both good Democrats, and you did what you had to do to help them win. This was my first lesson in politics

He was once near a muddy water-filled hole at a construction site that a girl had fallen into, and he dove into it to try to rescue her or at least find her. She had been down there for a few minutes. He could hold his breath for a very long time. He said the hole was so black and muddy, he could not see anything. He felt his way around and after about a minute and a half, he finally found the girl, and brought her up, but it was too late. She had drowned. His superior swimming skills helped me survive one of God’s first challenges that came my way early in life.

He attended Holy Cross on a football and swimming scholarship. After his sophomore year, the school suggested that he might be better off going home to get a job and help his mother. He was intelligent enough to be an excellent student, as he would prove in later years, but studying was not a priority in his teenage years.

He met my mother in Boston during the mid 1930s. Unlike my Dad, she came from a big family and was the youngest of ten children. Her father had also died before she was a teenager and she too, along with several other siblings, had been raised by her mother.

Prospects were not that good in Boston during the depression and my dad hitch-hiked to Detroit in 1936 to live with his uncle until he could find work. Later that year, my ma also moved to Detroit. They were married in Plymouth, a Detroit suburb.

My Dad went to work for a Brewery and for the Briggs Company, which was owned by the same family that owned Briggs Stadium, later renamed Tiger Stadium. It was the home of the Detroit Tigers for almost a century. Both the Brewery and the Briggs Company subsequently went out of business.

Our family tree is filled with Irish names like Rohan, Daly, Clougherty, Doyle, O’Connor, and O’Brien. The whole lot of them came from Ireland, a few passing through Scotland on their way to America. They settled in New York and Boston. With that lineage, I have always had a soft spot in my heart for the Irish.

I was born in Bon Secours Hospital, and baptized Patrick Sheridan. I was almost named Daniel since my Godfather Dan Dailey loaned my dad five bucks on the Saturday I was born. My dad seriously considered naming me after Dan Dailey as a token of his appreciation for the five bucks. Fortunately, my mother insisted on staying with their plan to name me Patrick. Daniel is a nice enough name. My brother Paul named one of his kids, Daniel, but, Way to go Ma.

Bon Secours Hospital is located in Grosse Pointe, a suburb of Detroit. There were five cities named Grosse Pointe on the east side of Detroit; the Woods, the Shores, the Park, the Farms, and just plain Grosse Pointe. Grosse Pointe Woods was at the low economic end of the five Grosse Pointes, and I believe Grosse Pointe Shores was at the high end. They all thought they were the cat’s ass, so whenever I was with anyone from any of the five, I said I was from Grosse Pointe also. It kept them from becoming overbearing, and it kept me from telling them what I really thought of their ill-founded arrogance.

The truth is that I only lived in Grosse Pointe for the few days that I was in the hospital. As soon as I left the hospital, we went to our home on Coplin Street in the middle of the city of Detroit. I lived in the city of Detroit for 28 years and in the Detroit metropolitan area for over half of my life.

My brother Paul was my best friend when I was growing up. All my very first memories of him are positive and that never changed. He was very bright, and an excellent student, but his track record never caused me any problems. Young boys generally have heroes, often from movies or sports. Paul and my Dad were my two favorite heroes.

My only boyhood sports hero was Ted Williams, who played for the Boston Red Sox. He was the last player ever to hit over .400 for an entire season. Even though we lived in Detroit, our family loved the Boston Red Sox and we rooted for them no matter who they played. My Dad and I loved Ted Williams. My grandmother, who still lived in Boston, hated Williams. When he refused to tip his cap, she was furious, and we only loved him all the more. Ted Williams was the only sports hero I ever had, although a few years later, when Mickey Mantle broke into the majors, he was a close second. An autographed photo of Ted Williams hitting a home run on opening day in 1947 still hangs on the wall in my bedroom.

My Dad had joined the Detroit Police Department in 1938. In 1943, a race riot broke out in Detroit. All police officers reported to duty and stayed there until the riots ended. One of my earliest memories is that he was gone for several days without coming home. That had never happened before, and my mother was very worried, so Paul and I were worried. He had never been gone for more than a single shift before and the radio reported that the riots were out of hand. When he finally came home, he mentioned that many people had been killed, including several policemen. I don’t believe I understood any of that other than the fact that he hadn’t been home when he usually was.

He did tell me about one bad guy who was firing a rifle from a hotel room and had killed and wounded several people on the street below. The Detroit Police Department had a rifle team and they brought one of their sharpshooters to the scene. The shooter kept ducking back out of sight as soon as he took a shot, so no one could fire back at him. The next time he fired, the police sharpshooter saw him and trained on that particular window. The second time he stuck his head and rifle out, the police officer put one in his head.

I didn’t fully understand the significance of the 1943 race riots in Detroit until many years later, when in 1967; race riots broke out again in Detroit. I still lived in the city of Detroit close to my first home. When I heard gunshots from my front porch in 1967, it made me think of my dad’s experience in 1943, and I appreciated how much harder those types of events are on police officers than they are on the rest of us.

My sister Kate was born in 1942, when I was two years old, thus ending my short-lived career as the baby of the family, as well as our little perfect-sized family. My sister Mary was born in 1944, and we were now getting to be a pretty good sized family and a crowded one. We needed more room, and moved to a new home, still in the city of Detroit, which was located on the corner of Barlow and Fairmount. Living on the corner lot would turn out to be wonderful once we became old enough to play in the street. Our address was 20000 Barlow, the easiest address to remember I would ever have.

It was a small house, which cost six thousand dollars; the monthly payments on the mortgage were thirty-eight dollars. It had a living room, kitchen, two bedrooms and a bath, all on the first floor. We had an unfinished attic upstairs and an unfinished basement.

Our neighborhood was a new development. Those were the days before anyone cared about the environment, and every single tree had been removed to build fifteen houses per block. The lots were all forty feet wide, and eighty feet deep. All of the houses were identical. We didn’t have a garage, but the back yard was long enough to build a small one, which we did a few years later, with the entry facing the side street. We didn’t have an alley, and on the street behind us, were fifteen identical lots, sharing the same back fence.

The year we moved to our new home, 1944, FDR was elected to a fourth term. I guess there is no limit to a President’s ego. By then, his health was so bad that he was completely incapable of serving as president, and to prove the point, he died of old age less than three months after taking the oath of office. This elevated Harry Truman to the Presidency. Truman had more common sense and guts than any other President in my lifetime and I’ve lived to see fourteen of them.

I don’t know if it was because the war ended in 1945, because we had a new home; or just because a year had gone by, but we had another baby. My sister Frances was born that year. We called her Doods. Paul and I were now in a minority, outnumbered by the girls’ three to two.

Every summer, my folks drove back to Boston to visit their relatives. Grandma Sheridan drove to Detroit with my Aunt Mabel to visit us each summer as well. Mabel wasn’t really my aunt, but they had lived together ever since my Dad moved to Detroit. My Ma’s mother, Grandma Rohan, was very old and wasn’t well enough to travel, so we only saw her at her home in Boston.

In the early forties, when my folks traveled to Boston, we were split up and stayed with friends. When I was four years old, I stayed with a family named McKay. They had a son, Mickey, who was my age, so I had someone to play with. The only thing I can remember about those visits was breaking my football. I had a rubber football, quite a bit smaller than regular size, but perfect for my small hands.

They had rose bushes with thick thorns lining their fence in the back yard, and my ball went into the bushes. When I retrieved it, it had a hole in it. Peewee football did not start until many years later and I was never able to find another football that size. For years afterwards, I wondered who, in their right mind, would surround a football field with thorny rose bushes.

We were not permitted to cross the street until our seventh birthday, a date we looked forward to for years. To this day, I remember it more fondly than any other birthday, including my sixteenth, when I became old enough to drive a car.

One day, when I was only five years old, I had one of my many arguments with my sister Kate, which resulted in my being punished. Punishment usually consisted of being whacked on the ass if I had made her cry, and sent to my bedroom, which wasn’t much fun in those days before we had computers, televisions, or even a radio. One or two whacks on the ass always did the trick. Hitting Kate was usually, although not always, worth getting spanked anyway.

One day, I had enough. I packed my things in a bag and ran away from home. My things consisted of a couple of toys. I would have taken some food, but we were not allowed to take food without permission. I had no intention of ever coming back, but I wasn’t crazy, and I didn’t want to test the food rule. Since I was not old enough to cross the street, I could only walk down Barlow to the next corner and sit there.

It was the furthest I had ever been away from home on my own, but I didn’t know anyone at that end of the block, and there was nothing to do. It began to occur to me that I had not clearly thought this out. Any move I made would bring me closer to home so I stayed there. Crossing the street never even occurred to me. When it started to get dark, my dad whistled for me to come home, as he always did. This was the first time I was ever far enough away from home not to hear it. When that didn’t work, he sent my brother Paul to get me.

Paul was not amused when he got to the end of the block and found me sitting on the curb.

Why are you sitting there?

I ran away from home.

Sitting on the curb one block from your home is not running away from home.

It was the best I could do, since I’m not seven like you are and I’m not allowed to cross the street.

Do you have any money?

I found two cents in the junk drawer and I took it.

Good thinking. You never want to run away without money in your pocket. It’s probably just as well that you can’t cross the street. This is about as far as you can go on two cents.

I had just figured that out when you showed up.

"Well, it’s getting dark. Dad thought you were in the yard. He’s not happy.

Let’s go home."

Okay.

Paul put his arm around my shoulder and we started walking back to the house.

Why did you run away from home?

I had a fight with Kate and she squealed on me to Dad when he got home from work.

You have a fight with Kate every day, and she always tells Dad as soon as he gets home.

It finally got to me.

How long were you going to sit on the corner?

I don’t know. I hadn’t thought that far ahead.

Well, even I’m not allowed out after dark. You might want to run away during the day next time. You can sit on the corner longer, said Paul, laughing.

Good idea. I said, as we entered the house.

I never ran away from home again.

Once we had five kids, we needed another bedroom. My Dad and some of his friends finished off the upstairs and it became the bedroom for Paul and me. The girls then had the second bedroom on the first floor. With all due respect to the two women who subsequently became my wives, I had more fun in that bedroom with my brother Paul than I have ever had in any bedroom before or since.

It was a long room with the stairs coming up to a window at one end. There was a three foot high half-wall around the stairwell which not only provided safety, but kept us from seeing anyone coming up until they reached the top of the stairs. The bed was toward the other end of the room and there was a window at the other end as well. The ceiling was tall enough down the center of the room to walk without stooping, but like most attic rooms, it was sloped along the sides.

Paul and I played catch, tag, hide and seek, cowboys and Indians, and anything else we could think of during the day, but at night, we really spent quality time together. When we went to bed, my dad would turn the lights off by using a switch at the doorway at the foot of the stairs. In all the years we slept there, I don’t remember either of us ever having the nerve to turn them back on, but it didn’t matter. There was sufficient light coming in one window from the streetlamp on the corner that we could see pretty well once our eyes became adjusted to the darkness.

We slept in the same bed, and usually started off just talking about life, people, the day’s events, and whatever else was on our mind. If we had a lot to talk about, we stayed out of trouble because we would talk until I fell asleep. If we had a lot of energy, or weren’t tired, or didn’t want to talk, we usually wrestled, or tried to push each other out of bed, or just had a pillow fight. The minute one of us, usually me, fell out of bed and hit the floor, my Dad jerked the door open and yelled, Do I have to come up there and beat your ass to get you to go to sleep? We both said no with me mumbling something about having fallen out of bed, and he slammed the door shut.

We never knew how he could hear us, since we were all the way upstairs, and he and my ma were usually in bed as well. In all the years we slept up there, it never once occurred to us that our bed was directly over his bedroom and he could probably hear every word we said.

After he slammed the door, we were completely quiet for about two minutes, and then Paul would whisper in my ear, Do you think he’s gone?

Yeah, he must be, I’d whisper. He had to be outside the door to slam it that hard. I can’t even hear any breathing either.

You better go check.

Why should I check? I went last night. It’s your turn to check.

Well, if you want to finish the pillow fight, you have to go check first. Besides, you’re smaller than me and can crawl more silently. And you’re a better crawler than me.

Really, you think I’m a better crawler? I whispered.

Of course you are. I’ll wait here and pretend I’m asleep just in case he is there. Then he’ll know we weren’t going to play some more because I’m already asleep.

I slid out of bed and lay down on the floor on my belly and started to crawl towards the window by the top of the stairs. Unbeknownst to me, irrespective of how many times it had previously occurred, my dad was quietly climbing the stairs barefoot. When I reached the end of the half wall, I slowly poked my head around the corner and was literally nose to nose with my Dad who yelled, Get back in bed before I beat your ass from here to Tuesday. The blast usually knocked me back against the wall and I scrambled back to bed, where Paul was snoring. From here to Tuesday was an expression I never fully understood, but never quite had the nerve to ask how my ass could travel from a place to a future point in time. After that, we usually fell asleep.

We always opened our Christmas presents late on Christmas Eve. After Santa Claus visited the house, my Dad would wake everyone up and we would go downstairs to see the presents under the tree. Each kid had his or her own little stack. One year, I was determined to see Santa Claus. I told Paul about my brilliant plan. There was a window at each end of the room and we would each take a window and sit by it watching for Santa. As soon as one of us saw him heading for the roof, the other would run over to that window and then we could both see him. We would not make a sound that night so there would be no chance that my Dad would come upstairs and catch us out of bed and beat our asses.

It was a foolproof plan with only two exceptions, one was that if Santa came directly from the east or the west we would never see him, since the windows faced north and south. The other was that we didn’t have a fireplace or a chimney so there was no reason for him to go on the roof. He’d have to park on the street and come in the front door like everyone else, and the front door was on the west side of the house.

I sat perfectly still for about twenty minutes. Then I heard Paul moving behind me. He was heading to bed. I ran over to the bed.

What are you doing? I asked in a panic. You’ll miss him.

I can see out of my window from the bed. Don’t worry. I’ll let you know when he comes.

Okay, but you better not fall asleep.

No problem.

When my Dad came up the stairs to tell us that Santa Claus had been there, he found me sound asleep on the floor under my window and Paul asleep on the bed.

Later when I found out that there was no Santa, I asked Paul how long he had known.

Do you remember the first year you started watching out the window for Santa?

Yeah, I do.

I found out the summer before that.

Paul and I had been inseparable for the first few years of my life. He was a role model without ever wanting or trying to be one. He was bigger, stronger, faster, braver, funnier, and a whole lot smarter than me. I used to think it was because he was older, but it wasn’t. It never changed. He always treated me like an equal and never talked down to me or let any of his friends talk down to me either. Everybody has their faults and I’m sure he had his, but whenever I thought about Paul, I’ve never been able to think of any. He was probably the best person I ever knew. Once he started going to school, it took away a big part of my daily life. Sleeping together during those years made the transition a very happy time for both of us.

There were a lot of things that my Dad taught Paul, and then Paul taught me. It wasn’t that my Dad didn’t want to repeat himself and teach me the same things that he taught Paul, it just became Paul’s responsibility to teach me.

One of the fun things Paul taught me was how to skate and play ice hockey. My Dad had an incredible idea. The first time that it snowed during our first winter on Barlow, he went out and shoveled the snow off of the grass in the back yard. He shoveled it from the middle out so that he created a large square clearing with the snow piled along the property lines on the side, and then a pile across the middle of the back yard so we had a large rectangle bordered by the back of the house and three long piles of snow. Then he turned on the hose and sprayed the piles so they froze. The next night he sprayed the ground inside the rectangle and formed ice on the ground. By the third night, all the grass was covered and the ice skating rink was perfectly smooth.

I played my first game of hockey when I was four years old. I was terrible, but at least I could skate and handle the puck a little bit. Usually Paul and I played after school against whichever two kids showed up to play. Fortunately, no one could hit a slap shot or lift the puck off the ice because every time it went over the pile on the street side, we had to walk across the street on our skates to retrieve it. By the time we were old enough to lift the puck, my Dad had put a fence around the yard. Most of the time, the fence stopped the pucks from leaving the yard.

Every night, the last person to leave the ice had to spray the yard in order to resurface the ice. We were like human Zamboni’s. Paul was the Zamboni for the first few years, but the tradition carried on for decades. Every day, when we came home from school, we took the ice when it was in pristine condition. The only problem was during the early spring when the temperature bounced up and down, the ice would melt and flow across the sidewalk. It would then refreeze at night. The neighbors weren’t too happy about walking across an ice covered sidewalk, but shit happens and there was always the other side of the street. Later, my Dad put a floodlight on the roof that lit up the entire hockey rink so we could play at night. Now we were just like the Detroit Red Wings except for their cool uniforms, and they had a real Zamboni.

The worst day we ever had in the yard occurred a few years later when I was playing hockey with most of my kid brothers. I was never very good but enjoyed playing in the yard with them, even though they were kids and I was a teenager. During one game, Tim stole the puck from Mike, and Mike broke Tim’s collarbone with his stick. We didn’t know that Tim’s collarbone was broken at the time, but we knew that he’d been hurt pretty bad because he left the ice. Tim was a great kid and a fierce competitor and he would not have left the ice if he hadn’t been really hurting.

I felt terrible since I was the oldest one on the ice and I felt that somehow I should have prevented it. I was sure I’d get in trouble when my Dad got home. I was ready with my defense if things had gone that way. I was going to mention that Mike got a two minute penalty for high sticking. As it turned out, my Dad was more interested in what was wrong with Tim than how it happened and he took him to see Doctor Kennary. Doctor Kennary