Daddy's Little Girl

submitted by Jean

I remember Daddy. I was daddy’s little girl.( My sister didn’t arrive until 10 years later.) He used to sing to me “Everybody loves my Baby, but my baby don’t love nobody but me!”

He was the first of his friends to marry (at 20) and have a kid, and still play baseball, etc. When I was young, he used to take me to his baseball games and practices, and I would play under the stands with the junk and broken bottles. I also went to the pool hall with him and played under the tables. I bet if Mom knew she would not have let him baby sit.
Once when he watched me at home, he tied a rope around my waist so I would not get in trouble, well this bump on my nose tells what happens when you jerk my string.

Everybody knew Lou and he pretended to know them. When we were out you would hear “Hi Lou” , he would greet them like a long lost friend. I would say who is that, he’d say “I don’t know”. And now 70 years later people still come up to me and tell me how much they loved Lou from hand ball at Forest Park and from the “Y”, now called the “J”

He was always in trouble with Mom. Some times when he came home from work, he would open the door and wait before coming in. When I asked him why, he would reply “ If my hat comes sailing out, I’d know she is still mad.” Once he had forgotten Valentines Day, so he stopped on the way home from downtown. At the only drug store open he bought a box of candy in a Purple heart box.
He put on a good front, but he really was a softie. When I performed in school plays, he didn’t want to come because he was afraid I would mess up.

He was always the life of the party and he would drink too much. Mom said he would play the drums, loved to tap out melodies at home with his spoon, but at parties he thought he was a pro! He always told stories. We had all heard them but they got better over the years because he kept enlarging on the stories. At their 50th wedding anniversary, he spoke at the head table. We had a tape recorder nearby and on the tape you could faintly hear Mom (Cele) kept muttering ,”That's not funny Louie!”.

He was his mother’s favorite. We would go to her house on Friday night and she would take out her best table cloth and napkins and challah cover. Everything smelled like mothballs that she had in the drawer. When Bobba served the chicken soup, we all got small bowls but Daddy got a serving bowl. After dinner, she would say “ Louie why don’t you go for a walk. She knew he wanted to smoke, but it wasn't allowed on Shabbat.

He loved to smoke. When he smoked a pipe he would hold the barrel against his nose to put a shine on it. Mom wouldn’t let him smoke cigars in the house, so he would just chew on them. Years later when I lived in Washington DC, he and Mom came to visit. He left his mark (there were dead cigar stubs in the front yard!) I was far away but on Friday nights we would watch the boxing matches on TV, I was in DC, he was in St. Louis. Now I watch ”Wheel of Fortune” ( with my Mother.)