My grandmother Francie was a lot of fun, but didn't talk about serious things.  The exception to this was the topic of her first husband, my grandfather Arnold, who died in his sleep at the age of 47. When discussing him, she would pull a Kleenex from her purse, daub her eyes a couple of times, and remind me that one should always look their best because “you never know who you might meet.” The conversation would then abruptly change direction to happier, current subjects.

Shortly after my grandfather died, Francie entered into a rebound marriage to a man named Richard, who was 17 years’ her junior and who my mother called “the mama's boy" – owing to the fact that he lived with HIS mother up until the day he and my grandmother married.  The union lasted just over a year. After Francie divorced “the mama’s boy”, he was never mentioned again and she went on with her life, eventually finding an apartment in the building where she encountered the man who was to become her third husband and the only grandfather figure I would ever know.

I was in the first grade when Francie met Al. They were living in the Carriage House, an apartment hotel on Chicago Avenue across the street from the National Guard Armory. On the outside, it had the boring, boxy architectural style popular in buildings constructed in the early 1960’s, but its ordinary looks were deceiving. The locally famous Eli’s steak house was in the lobby (patronized by Machine politicians, mobsters and big spenders), and a swimming pool and restaurant were on the roof (for the residents’ grandchildren).  

But the most important feature of the Carriage House was its role as a swingin’ singles dorm for widows and widowers – a roiling cauldron of sexual tension and intrigue for the Geritol set.  The roving bridge games and cocktail parties were a front for juicy gossip and elderly flirtations. There was intense competition among the women for male attention because the numbers handily favored the men - who were easily outnumbered – by at least a 4:1 ratio. But my grandmother had no rivals. She seemed to effortlessly attract men, and Al was no exception.  

At first it was exciting to have a new grandfather - until my cousins and I discovered that we were no longer allowed to sleep in the spare twin bed in Francie’s room when we spent the night. The honeymoon was over for me, and soon I began to wonder what my grandmother saw in this peculiar man and his odd habits that she so happily indulged.

Whenever they ate at our house, my grandmother would cut Al’s meat like he was a kindergartner. I'd always make a point of loudly asking my mother why grandma Francie had to cut Al's roast beef when he was perfectly capable of doing so himself.  She would give me what my sister and I called “the hairy eyeball” and say, "Shhhhh!"

Al would start drinking his vodka before dinner. By the time we sat down at the table, he was surly and ready to argue (my mother called it “debate”) about anything. His standard opening salvo was the pronouncement that "Those Beatles would have been NOTHING!! NOTHING!! Without Brian Epstein!" This was the cue for my father to water down the vodka. Then Al would say something derogatory about Everett Dirksen, or Richard Nixon both of whom my mother idolized. But the argument was always a one-sided affair because nobody (except me) really paid any attention to his bluster. Eventually the “debate” would degenerate into accusations of my grandmother's supposed infidelities, at which point she would turn off her hearing aids and smile as if she were having a nice, quiet, civilized dinner somewhere else.

As I got older, I began to understand and appreciate the goodness Francie saw in Al, whose only apparent flaw turned out to be his odd and combative vodka fueled dining etiquette.  He died in the late 1980’s followed by Francie and my father in the mid-1990’s. The Armory was replaced by the Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Carriage House was demolished to make room for one of several new buildings in the sprawling Northwestern Memorial Hospital complex.