Tales of the South Side: I Really Do Not Know How to Respond to This

There I was, in my cubicle at Leo, waiting for the One o'clock meeting with the boys from J Walter Thompson. I twas going to be a good meeting. I like good meeting and really dislike when meetings go bad. I'm a Catholic school Development guy, I should know that things get dicey.

Dicier than a souse chef on bennies and ignored at Charlie Trotter's wake and a thiry year mortgage on three flat in the gold Coast.

The clock would not move. It stood still like the dame I asked to the Little Flower Homecoming Dance in 1968, when I was home from the seminary for weekend and didn't really go to Little Flower High School yet , because I was still in the seminary up in Holland Michigan.  Well, that skirt just looked at me like a clock standing still.  Then she moved real fast.  She was what we used to call a fast girl.  I can't run a lick,

So there I was loading data into the Excel Spreadsheets, when I decided to check my e-mails. The clock had moved.

There were nine, from Leo High School Alumni and twenty six ED ads that I deleted - not the Alumni, the Droopy Johnson ads.  I was all set to return messages about how I would get to them, like Mike '69 in Downers Grove who still had not received the thank you from me for the dough he sent in in December.  Missed that one.  And the other eight.  I missed them like a fat man misses Thanksgiving dinner at the cousins.

I was in the middle of my response to Mike '69 when another E-mail popped up.

Dear Hickey, I suppose you'll call this a confession when you hear it... Well, I don't like the word confession, I just want to set you right about something you couldn't see because it was smack up against your nose. You think you're such a hot potato as a claims manager; such a wolf on a phony claim... Maybe y'are. But let's take a look at that Dietrichson claim... accident and double indemnity. You were pretty good in there for awhile Hickey... you said it wasn't an accident, check. You said it wasn't suicide, check. You said it was murder... check.

Fred MacMurray

I went colder than that twist I asked out from Kenilworth - who went all haughty at Beni Hana's in the hibachi room when my big toe popped through my calf-length socks after I kicked off my wing-tip brogans.  I went cold.

 Something just was not right.

Fred MacMurray had three sons as I recall and like me was a widow man.  He lived in Kankakee,as did I.  MacMurray was a musician and I play guitar and 5-string banjo (C tuning).  Fred had been a nutty professor and I am in education yet.

My boss, Dan McGrath, hollered that we had a meeting.  I sat rigid at my desk.  Fred MacMurray.

He was not happy.  Fred MacMurray, not Dan McGrath. Dan is getting used to how I am.  Fred MacMurray obviously is not, or does not.   Man, it's cold. Colder than Fred MacMurray.