4/5/02 7:30 AM Friday
Bettino Fragale

Betts was my father's best friend and one of the few adults that I called by first name.

A word about names.
One high school weekend, we loaded ourselves into Jake's father's car, me, Jake, Phil and Mike, went to somewhere in East Liberty, picked up a couple of Mike's friends and went looking for trouble. Stupid I know, but it’s what we did weekly. Luckily we hardly ever found it. We scored some beer and very raw whiskey with fake IDs, and off we went. One of the new guys said they knew where there was a party at Chatham College. Man, we were impressed, an all girls school. Say no more, we headed up Negley Hill.

The people at the party did not receive us well. The hostess, daughter of the Dean or some administrator, avoided us. She whispered in her boyfriend's ear. Someone called him a college puke. We were kicked out. We battled a group of protecting boyfriends on the snow covered front yard. They got their bumps we got ours. After a little blood was spilled, we hopped back into the car full of bravado and craving more beer and cheap whiskey. Now we were combatant buddies and one of the East Liberty guys asked my name in a maudlin, bumbling drunken way that indicated he was going to hug me or give me a wet kiss. Someone told him. He looked surprised and then laughed in loud jerky movements, Kootchicalo, he said, what the hell kind of name is that. It is the kind of name that you gain and never loose. I became Kootchie. There are some who still would call me that. Them I permit, we are after all combatant comrades. I advise all others to avoid it.

Names! My parents lived in a complicated dance of strange names. Here are the people that inhabited my childhood. There was Pickles, Betts, and Maiyu (Actually I don't know how to spell Maiyu. It is pronounced like the word Mayan but with a U ending in place of the -an.), There was my Uncle Cal, Pally, Sparky and Rabbit. Is it any wonder when my family migrated to the suburbs of Wright, Donaldson, Buether, Woods and Fisher, that I felt out of place?

So Betts was my father's best friend and he was the closest thing my brother and I had to Obi Wan Ben Kanobi. Betts paid attention to me and my brother and we adored him.

His trade was painter, and an exquisitely good one he was. I remember him painting the wood trim of a window. Straddling a ladder, cigarette dangling from his mouth, ash would fall and float to the ground as he breathed. The paint brush pointed upward to a severe point, he would move along the wooden sash and execute perfectly. Never an overrun, never a drop spilled. I know how he would have scored me at the same job. Hastily applied pieces of masking tape. Gross strokes as the brush paints tape window and wood. After the removal of the mask, vigorous wiping with a wet paint soaked rag, scraping with a razor the excess dried paint from the window. What, Betts would look, the hell is wrong with you?

Betts was a short, thin guy with a large nose and a sad sack face. He fought with Patton’s Army in Europe. He drove a gas truck that supplied the tanks. He would always laugh and shake his head when he told us how he hid under his truck when German planes strafed the first time.

Betts taught us how to play chess. I was never very good. The game always kind of bored me. Game thinking is not one of my strengths. I get frustrated and desperate as the possibilities begin to close down after every move. My brother was pretty good. Betts was unrelenting. He would never “let” us win. He never tired of playing us and teaching either. His eyes would gleam when we would finally make a worthy move.

Betts lived, later in his life, in a small trailer and managed a pitch and putt golf course in Harmarville, Pa. My brother and I spent endless summer days either working at the Pitch and Putt or at the driving range up on Freeport Road. I remember sitting at the trailer table with a coke, Betts and my old man with some whiskey and explaining this book that I was enamored of. It was called Atlas Shrugged. I mentioned that the author Ayn Rand said that the social structure of the world was typified by a pyramid with rich folk at the apex holding the world together with their cunning, strength and goodness. Betts, laughed, took a drink and explained that the pyramid image might be right but as far as he saw it, it was the working man at the bottom holding up the world. I ultimately figured that who rests the world on their shoulders is really of little importance. Betts' vision was more perceptive than Ayn's, no mater how strange the spelling of her name.

Betts suffered a stroke a short time after he got married, That was, as it turned out very late in his life. He was no longer Betts after the stroke. He passed away one morning. I was coming home on the bus with my mother. I heard the news earlier in the day and assumed that she knew. She couldn’t figure out why my father was such a mess when we got home or why I hadn’t mentioned anything. I worked out a lot of things on that ride home. It was my first silent mourning.

I regret that I have not yet launched my time machine. I would go to visit my father and Betts at a bar that they used to frequent called The Hub. In my heart I know that I would not be the kind of man that they would want to hang with, but for a drink or two I could fake it.