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One for the Books: I Remember the Geisel

One for the Books: I Remember the Geisel by Annabelle Echo
Even Mrs. Schuchter, a nice old lady from the neighborhood, called my Great Uncle, Louis H. Teclo, “Uncle Lou”.
Uncle Lou spent every Sunday dinner with me and my immediate family.
His favorite topic of conversation was “the Boys”, his 70 something year old friends that he hung out with once or twice a week: Al Winicker, a happy-go-lucky widower, Charlie Bloom, a sad, elegant and urbane bachelor and “the Geisel” who’s ill manners monopolized Uncle Lou’s Sunday monologue.
The Geisel would end up soused on 10 martinis by the end of each and every get-together with the Boys.
Although he always complained about the Geisel, Uncle Lou never stopped spending time with him.
Stranger still, was the fact that I too was spending a lot of time with the Geisel and didn’t even know it!
As far as I was concerned, I never even met the Geisel. And this had nothing to do with Martinis.
I spent my summers at Promontory Point, a lakefront park on the south side of Chicago.
There I often met up with several “Beach Bums” who regularly would make an appearance to swim, sun bathe or just hang out.
My favorite beach friend was Jim Lessing, a 70 something year old retiree who always kept me laughing and in high spirits.
Now, imagine rewinding the days back in time a bit to the dead of winter. The sky is dark by 4PM and the air temperature is well below zero:
I was riding #6 CTA Bus, returning home at Rush Hour. Across the street and kitty corner from my Uncle Lou’s East Park Tower apartment, several floors of the Del Prado Hotel were engulfed in flames.
Fire fighters incased in ice battled the blaze long into the night.
Now imagine fast-forwarding the days not too far and return to the balmy breezes of summer:
The usual suspects had gathered to commiserate the ghastly winter we had endured and celebrate the perfect present.
We started talking about the Del Prado fire. Jim had been in a half conscious stupor when the smell of smoke and maybe a smoke alarm roused him.
“Damn it!” he thought. “I burned another T.V. dinner!”
But before he could get to the kitchen, he could barely discern through greasy black smoke the ice-covered silhouette of a shivering fireman clinging to a ladder right outside of his window.
To get his attention, Jim threw a chair clear through the closed window.
Glittering glass exploding outward mingled with sparkling air crystals, showering the fireman.
At the same time, gushing water from a firehose doused Jim head to toe.
Somehow the two men became one clinging animated ice sculpture shivering slowly and gradually lower down the ladder to safety.
Luckily Jim who was kind of skinny except for his beer gut, had a friend nearby who could lend him warm dry clothing. However he described his friend whom he called, Lou, as portly.
Jim laughed about and described how funny he looked walking around, swimming in Lou’s oversized yet dapper apparel.
After hearing this story something clicked in my head. This was very strange:
Uncle Lou as much as he complained about the Geisel never once mentioned this rather unusual incident or a friend named Jim or how he helped him out when he was in such desperate need. I don’t recall him even talking about the Del Prado fire.
But I figured it out. My friend Jim and my uncle’s friend the Geisel were one and the same!