Call Me Lumpy: My Leave It to Beaver Days and Other Wild Hollywood Life by Frank Bank, Gibu Twyman Read Free Book Online Page B

Len. Something is happening here."
My old man was really funny. I can just hear him going, "Sylvia, shaddup. I'm goin' as fast as I can."
My mom told me he pulled right up into the parking lot at Hollywood Pres and ran up to the ambulance entrance. I never made it to the delivery room. I didn't make it to the reception desk either. I poked out in the car.
That was April 12, 1942.
And, you know what? I feel like I've always been right on time.
Part of the joy of my life, in my estimation, has been timing. It's just that I seemed to have been at the right place at the most perfect time.
Even if I didn't know it was the most perfect time in a lot of instances.
And so much of my perfect times in life begin with my parents. They were good people. I was so lucky. My whole life, you could call me "Lucky" instead of "Lumpy."
Because I have been.
I had the greatest childhood anyone could ever want.
The greatest adolescence.
I've lived like nobody ever lived and it all started with Sylvia and Leonard.
My father was the consummate male chauvinist pig. My father was the pre-eminent Archie Bunker and chauvinist pig all rolled up into one, with a heart of gold, and he was the biggest pussycat that ever lived.
That was my old man. I loved him dearly. He was a diamond in the rough. My dad used to walk around with a stogie, swore like a sailor. But he was the biggest, mushiest pushover you ever saw in your life.
We were strictly a middle-class family. My dad was a butcher. He had his own business, the Leonard Meat Co.
My mother was the Minnesota state typing champion when she was 18 and she was a knockout. My mother was flat-out gorgeous. She was queen of the Mardis Gras. Sylvia was so beautiful.
My mother went to work for Remington-Rand when she was 18. My mother had a job during the Depression, when my dad didn't for seven years. She supported the family as a secretary for Remington-Rand while my dad couldn't find a job.
They were "victims," if you called it that, of the Depression. But they refused to stay down. They always got back up. They always fought on. Moved forward. Prevailed. They couldn't be stopped with elephant guns.
My parents had a great romance.
My mother was from Northfield, Minn., about 100 miles north of

 

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Minneapolis. Northfield is where Jesse James had the great Minnesota raid. OK? The Daltons were killed there and Frank James was shot there.
Do you know who shot Frank James?
A 14-year-old deputy sheriff who was hiding behind a watering trough because they had no sidewalks. His name was Tom Anderson.
That was my grandfather. My mother's maiden name was Anderson. I am half-Norwegian. My mother was a heavy-duty Lutheran before converting to Judaism.
And it was Sylvia's father, Tom, who shot Frank James. Only he didn't know it was Frank James.
He was hiding behind the watering trough because he knew it was the James Gang. He was scared out of his gourd and he was aiming over the watering trough and he hit some guy in the leg.
The guy fell off the horse.
All these other guys come running out of everyplace with pitchforks and shovels and all that and started beating the living daylights out of the guys on the ground.
Jesse made it out of town.
But Frank didn't.
Frank spent 20 years in the Minnesota State Reformatory, courtesy of Grandpa Tom.
Fact. And the movies about Frank and Jesse are total baloney, because they have them riding all over the friggin' place doing different bank jobs. Meanwhile, Frank is hanging out back in the cooler, because Grandpa Tom put him there.
Even if Grandpa Tom didn't know what the hell he was doing at the time.
So what?
Andersons and Banks were always right on time.
They were always right on top of everything.
My dad was a great athlete in Minneapolis. He played high school football with a guy named Pudge Heffelfinger, whom you might have heard of, if you are a dyed-in-the-wool sports nut. Pudge was greater than Bronko Nagurski. Better than Red Grange. One of the first guys elected to