The Terrible Antones

One spring morning, in the year 1962, Jimmy Antone was in a terrific butting mood. Something had got his goat, ruffled his feathers, waved a red flag, and he was rarin’ to start butting. This was his standard reaction whenever he got mad. I was there, and saw it -- and narrowly missed being butted in the stomach myself. I have no idea what set Jimmy off. All I know is it wasn’t me. When Jimmy missed me by a hair’s breadth he backed up, made a deep gargle sound that he fancied mimicked an Evinrude outboard motor, and took off for the side of his parent’s car. Bang! His noggin left a dent in the side of the passenger door. Not satisfied with a probable concussion, Jimmy backed up again, gargled some more, and roared into the rose trellis next to the front porch. It fractured without impaling Jimmy with any wooden lathes. Then Mrs. Antone stuck her head out the living room window, screaming at Jimmy to stop messing around or she’d call his father home right this instant. Jimmy desisted, looking around him with smug satisfaction at the carnage he had already caused. Then we got back to spinning our Duncan tops on the cement sidewalk in front of his house -- a sidewalk that was cracked and uneven from elm tree roots. It made for rotten skating.

The Antones lived two doors down from us on 19th Avenue Southeast, in Minneapolis. Their home was notable for once belonging to Hubert H. Humphrey when he was Mayor of Minneapolis back in the Forties. Mr and Mrs Antone came from Lebanon, and they never let a chance go by to proudly mention their quasi-connection with a political bigwig like Humphrey. This did not sit well with my dad, who hated Humphrey with a passion rare in one of his usually phlegmatic (read: hungover) nature. It turns out that during his campaign for Mayor, Humphrey had stopped in at Aarone’s Bar & Grill, where my dad worked, and had a beer. He paid for it and left, without the customary tip to the bartender. This enraged dad, and he never let it go. One day Mr. Antone mentioned their connection with Humphrey once too often in the presence of my dad at a neighborhood barbecue. Dad fixed his beady red eyes on Mr. Antone and said, in a voice usually reserved for cursing Earl Battey at Twins games, “That Humphrey is so cheap he wouldn’t pay a dime to see Christ ride a bicycle!” The ensuing shocked silence was broken only when my mother sternly said “Don, it’s time to go home.” The look of murder in her eye would have cowed John Wayne. My sisters and I were told to stay at the barbecue and have another Oscar Mayer weiner before coming home. For once we were smart enough to obey our parents implicity, and thus avoided an undoubtedly gruesome domestic foofaraw at home.   

The Antones were Mr and Mrs, with four children: Judy and Rose, and Ronnie and Jimmy. Rose was the oldest; she was practically out of the house by the time I grew conscious of the female species -- having gone to beauty college and set up her own beauty salon in Nordeast Minneapolis. Judy I recall as a certified little angel -- always smiling and speaking politely. I’d like to say she grew up to be an axe murderess but in all fairness I don’t remember anything  else about her.

Ronnie, as the oldest boy, was expected to be rock solid and protective of his family. He and Mr. Antone got into some epic fights in their screened  back porch on summer evenings that reverberated throughout the neighborhood, and were listened to with keen interest from open windows back in those days when air conditioning was for movie theaters and not for private homes. The gist of these loudspeaker discussions was that Ronnie had better settle down and stop drinking beer and playing cards with his cronies down at the factory -- to which Ronnie always replied he would do whatever he damn well pleased and would the old man kindly take a bleeping leap into the nearest lake. After one stormy session Ronnie finally moved out and the family didn’t see him again for several years, by which time Mr. Antone had become the victim of several strokes which left him scrawny and hesitant in speech and gait. When Ronnie finally did come back home for a visit he brought with him his blue-eyed Swedish bride, and no one was more fond of her than swarthy old Mr. Antone -- who liked to hold her hand when she took him out for his daily walk around the block.

The pride and joy of the Antones, and the envy of the entire neighborhood, was the twenty-five foot Chris-Craft boat that Mr. Antone bought with the settlement money he got from the railroad when he was injured on the job and lost his right index finger. That was some fine boat, lemme tell ya.

And it was the only boat of such magnificent proportions in the entire area. Oh sure, nearly everyone had a dinky little aluminum punt that you could put a motor on and putt around on Lake Harriet -- but the Antone boat was made to battle the waves of an inland sea like Lake Minnetonka. Or even tow up to Lake Superior for the whiting run.

And the hell of it was, the Antones never invited anyone ever to sail with them. Never. Ever. It was for family only. Didn’t matter how much you tried cozening up to them. I gave Jimmy my Lionel train set, tracks, locomotive, and water tower, as a gesture of sincere friendship -- but do you think that entitled me to a ride on the Antone yacht? No way, Jose! My mother shared her recipe for watermelon rind pickles with Mrs Antone -- something she would not do with anyone else, not even his sister Ruby -- but that cut no ice with the Antones; she stayed as landlocked as ever.

Once the ice was out of the rivers and lakes, Mr Antone got the boat out of storage and parked it in front of their house, where he polished it with marine wax until it sparkled like the Kohinoor diamond. Jimmy and I would clamber all over it, shouting nautical and piratical phrases at each other, like “Avast, ye landlubber!” and “Shiver me timbers, matey!” We took turns standing behind the wheel and sailing her to as many far away places as our anemic geography could supply.

Then early Sunday morning, when the rest of us peons were getting ready for church, the Antones would hook the boat up to their truck and roll majestically away for a day of fishing and hobnobbing with the other moguls afloat. I have no doubt that many in our neighborhood, as they gathered at their various places of worship, harbored a half-formed wish that the Antone’s boat would be caught in a cyclone and go down with all hands. I know I did.