The Complex, Funny and Often Puzzling Legend of Badge No. 1130!

Memoirs of a Geezer!

Reflections and Observations -- A Bright Passage from the Fantasies of Youth 

to Illuminations of Advanced Maturity!

This Episode:     The Complex, Funny and Often Puzzling Legend of Badge No. 1130!

No one, I believe, really cares to be identified solely by one aspect of his or her life or specific traits...  occupation, education, physical characteristic, disability, perennial geezer...  to cite a few examples.  (I often wonder if "Gabby" Hayes was born a geezer?!)  My brother-in-law was a cop, a respected and accomplished City of Milwaukee career police officer, but there was so much more to his personality, his life, "legend" and all that made him his "composite self."

Booby and Patty in
happy times.  They
loved a good party!

Booby -- Career Police Officer!  He
was also a Security Guard at a
Women's Dress Shop, a Pizza
Delivery Driver, etc...
(the latter two+ post cop career!)

Our children called him "Uncle Boobers" (the "double-o" pronounced as the "o" in "could"!).  He was christened Robert.  We variously called him Booby (same "o" sound as in "would"!), Boo Boo, Bo Bo, Bobby...  Bob is such a versatile name, but he knew the variations we favored, from time to time, were all delivered with genuine affection.

Bob was gifted with an exceptional sense of humor.  He was truly funny, demonstrating both verbal and physical comedy with equal deftness, and he told wonderful stories, particularly about his experiences as a cop, wearing Badge No. 1130.  Bob was fondest of his time working a police ambulance, with various partners, over the 25-plus-year-span of his career.  Great story about the "slippery corpse."  He and partner, "Wegie," (hard "g" sound!) were conveying a dead man via gurney on a wet, wintry evening.  They hit a bump in the sidewalk and the "stiff" (Booby's word) slid off the gurney, onto a snowy patch of boulevard and into the gutter.  The partners quickly plucked the corpse in its body bag out of the gutter and re-placed it with as much dignity as they could manage back onto the gurney.  (There was also a persistent rumor about another corpse and a long flight of icy concrete steps!  Never really confirmed or denied!  Interesting to visualize, however...)

"How many neighbors witnessed that bit of grisly theatre?" I asked, amid bursts of laughter.

"We didn't stop to count," said Bob, "but both of us noticed light coming from windows where curtains were held open.  We took the poor stiff to the morgue.  Left in a hurry, glad we didn't have to explain to our (shift) captain the dampness and dead leaves stuck to the body bag."

Booby was a drinker.  He drank a lot.  And we're not talking about green tea and fruit juice here.  Many of his stories centered on or involved strong drink.  Toward the end of a particular night shift, he relates, "We stop at Abie's Junk Yard for a visit, and drinks.  It was cold.  We sat in Abie's tiny warm-up hut, all of our knees touching, it was that small.  Abie gave us vodka and

One of Bob's Prized
Possessions...  It
Announced to Would-
Be Miscreants:  "Keep
Away from the
Cookie Jar!"

some sort of orange drink.  I don't know...  could'a been Tang.  I ask, 'So Abie, what's new?' 'Nuttin,' he says.  'It's all junk!' Abie's a wizened old coot, doesn't talk much, but he's always good for a morning pop."

Bob's police career wasn't all "stiffs" and early-morning boozing in junk yard shacks.  It had its serious moments.  On one occasion -- attempting to wrest a "weapon" from a frightened woman --  he was stabbed in the finger with a kitchen paring knife...  a domestic violence incident.  "It was a little embarrassing," he told us.  "I was yelling 'ow-wee, ow-wee' hopping around holding my bleeding finger.  Had a good outcome, though.  I was able to break up the fight, and return the home to a calm, grumbling chaos.  Didn't arrest anyone.  The stabbing was really an accident.  Mrs. apologized nicely.  She even gave me a bandaid.  At home, I told Pat (his wife), 'Honey, I was wounded on the job' as I held up my bandaged finger."

"Hey Booby, while on police duty, did you ever have to 'give chase'?" I once asked him. 

"Oh, yeah.  We were after a runaway speeder and had to drive over a rutted embankment.  The squad thudded and bumped.  My head hit the roof.  It hurt like hell.  I had to wear a neck brace for a few weeks."  It wasn't that episode, however, that caused Bob permanent injury to the vertebrae in his neck, ultimately necessitating surgery.  "We get a call from a pasta-pizza joint.  Big family fight...  more like a small riot.  Just as we came in, I get hit in the head with a plate of spaghetti!  Wrenched my neck backward..."

On ambulance conveyance duty again with "Wegie," one memorable night, "We're called to a home near downtown.  We knock.  A man's voice -- obviously in distress -- yells, "Come in, it's unlocked...  Hurry!  I'm in the bedroom!..."  

"We go in and there's this guy with a coat hanger sticking out of his butt.  He tells us he was with a prostitute and did or said something that really pissed her off.  He says the woman suggests, 'Hey, want me to do something that'll really turn you on?  Next thing I know,' the guy says, 'I get the coat hanger treatment!'  We load the guy onto a stretcher.  He's moaning like hell, obviously in great pain.  We cover him up, I mean he's buck naked, of course, and the coat hanger makes a tent of the blanket.  After he's loaded into the ambulance, door shut, Wegie looks at me and says, 'I guess it's the old coat hanger up the ass trick.'  We stifle our laughter, turn on the siren and race off to Emergency."              

At one of his routine training visits to the Milwaukee Police Academy, Booby tells us, he put lighted cigarettes in the mouth of a moose head on the wall of a meeting room.  "I stand in front of the moose like a drill sergeant...  'At ease, Bullwinkle, Smoke 'em if you got 'em.' "

My wife, Sweetheart, and I formed a great friendship with Booby and his wife, Pat.  Sadly, she died in the mid-1980's, caner of the pancreas.  In mid-summer of the earlier 80'sBob and Pat went on a rare out-of-town vacation, attending a bowling event in Las Vegas.  He asked us to look after his police-issue revolver, and to place the bullets in a different location for safety sake.  Upon Bob and Pat's return, I put the bullets in my pocket so as to be sure to return them to Booby.  I went through a Milwaukee airport metal detector several times, practically denuding myself in an effort to find the source of the beeping!  Finally, I remembered the bullets, and placed them in a tray.  I was sure a sheriff's deputy was set to take me away in chains, but Booby appeared and explained things.  Afterward Booby said to us, "What did that sheriff worry you'd do, put the bullets in your mouth and smack the 
back of your head?!"  

Sweetheart and I, along with other family members and friends, cared for Pat during her hospice period, the most intense portion being the last two weeks of her life.  It was a remarkable experience.  We gave Pat her pain med injections, sat with her, held her hand and spoke quietly of kinder and happier times.   Following Pat's death at just 42 years of age, Bobby took a serious tumble in terms of attitude, along with a dangerous escalation in "self medication."  His drinking became more a pathology than a mere diversion.  His most serious relationship with a woman, initiated more than a year after Pat's death, was steeped in alcohol, the new partner as addicted to strong drink as he was.  She, too, died young.  

Bob with daughter Susie, son Joey
and our daughter, Alie, on Susie's
lap.  1977 summer vacation time
at the Hearn cottage, L. Michigan.
Booby captured a moth, threw it into
the toilet...  It kept escaping.  He
let it live, throwing it out the door,
as another flitted in.  Big fun at
four in the morning with beer and
cribbage and annoying insects!  

In the passage of time, Bob's drinking increased, and his health worsened.  He gained weight and his head took on that "pumpkin-like" shape and size (my daughter's descriptive image) and ruddy coloring of a heavy drinker in decline.  His daughter, son, my wife and I participated in an intervention.  It didn't take!  What did take was a glacial cooling, worse, a freezing of our relationship.  It lasted more than a year, with almost no communication between or among us.  In time a melting began to occur, and Sweetheart and I could once again visit Booby in his Pewaukee home, and take him out for lunch and drinks at one of his favorite haunts.

Lunch for him consisted of scant food consumption -- most of the comestibles taken home in styrofoam cartons -- and usually at least three large tubs of vodka with a splash of something.  Fearing a recurrence of the "ice age" -- and knowing it would be a safer alternative to his drinking and driving -- we agreed to his wishes to take him to the tobacco depot for cartons of "low-tar" smokes, followed by a stop at the super market for two half gallons of vodka.  Then we'd drive him home, make sure he was settled and then do the small chores he seemingly couldn't manage on his own -- change a light bulb or two, put away his Pea Pod delivery, take out the trash...

2012...  Bob at Age 70!

There's little doubt he had a kind of death wish, one that intensified as more and more time passed following Pat's death, deepening gloom and self-pity his constant companions.  We often tried, and with some, albeit, modest success, to resurrect a spark of joy and laughter during our outings together.  The catalyst, most often, was one or more of his "cop stories."  We'd pry them out of him whenever we could do so, and sometimes that old sense of silly humor emerged in the telling.  

In the end, hospital bed-ridden and pronounced "terminal" by the MD's...  "He's not going home this time," said one of his doctors...  he ate some sweet rolls, delighted to do so thanks to our daughter who brought them for her Uncle Boobers.  No sense, then, worrying about his diabetes or hemochromatosis or any other of his chronic ailments.  He died shortly thereafter, having achieved just 70 years and seven months of life.  Too young, far too soon.

Sweetheart's brother, Jimmy, was at Booby's death bed.  "Well, you wanted to kill yourself; now you got your wish," said Jimmy.  Blissfully loaded with pain meds, Booby merely chuckled, most likely certain he was on his way, at last, to reunite with Pat, his high school sweetheart, the love of his life. 

Booby's funeral was an exceptional send-off, as funeral services go, a terrific reunion of old friends and family members, some like Dennis and Carol (long-time friends, he a fellow cop), arriving from far distant locations.  Afterward, we were gathered at the cemetery, waiting for everyone to arrive.  Jimmy stared for a time at the casket inside the hearse.  "Alright, Bobby," he said, "quit fooling around.  This isn't funny anymore.  Get up and get out of there."  We all had a good laugh.  Booby would have enjoyed it.

We may have closed Wolski's...  (None of us
remembers for sure...)  We certainly closed
Zaffiro's...  Had several snorts at the
Roman Coin, et al, et al, etc...!  

In my geezerhood, where I'm often lost in reflection, there's sadness, regret, laughter and memory.  Selective memory being what it is, I choose the happy and funny times, the crazy alcohol-buzzed sessions with Booby at the Koo Koo Club, the Rick Inn, Petroff's and so many more gin houses and kitchen tables.  On a particular Bloody Mary morning, seated in Bob and Pat's kitchen, a police sergeant rang the bell, arriving in person to check that Booby was really as sick as he claimed when he called in unable to report.  Booby went to the door wearing five pairs of sunglasses.  He probably took them off before answering the door...   Didn't he??!! 

Humbly Submitted 11-15-15 -- Joel K.      

(Special Note:    The perpetrator pays homage to law enforcement professionals, those generally honorable and intrepid guardians of our communities and public safety.  His own father was an FBI agent of considerable accomplishment and valor.  The perpetrator is privileged to have known and to count among his friends -- largely through Brother-in-Law Bob -- a number of Milwaukee police officers.  Be safe out there!  And, Thank You all!)