Book Excerpt
From Laughing My Way Through Life, by John Rinaldi
How About a Cliffhanger?
I wasn’t scared, but I’ll admit I was a little tense as I stood on top of the seventy-foot-tall platform looking down. The net that was supposed to catch me if the ropes failed seemed as small as a quarter. If something goes wrong, there’s no way I’ll land on that thing, I thought.
Then, just as I was about to jump, I heard one of the workers say to his partner, in the most casual tone, “Hey, isn’t this strap supposed to be attached?”
“Oh, yeah—good thing you noticed,” the other guy replied.
At that moment, my anxiety spiked. I didn’t know what strap they were talking about, but I started frantically inspecting every piece of gear as if my life depended on it—which I was convinced it did.
Then came the final blow to my nerves: “Okay, Lil’ John, remember—you have to dive headfirst.”
My wife, Sherry, was watching from below. She didn’t always come to these things, but she came this time because she was worried about this particular event. I’m sure she had our life insurance papers tucked in her purse just in case.
Now, if this isn’t a literal cliffhanger, it’s pretty darn close!
So how did I wind up in this situation? Believe it or not, it wasn’t the first time—and it wouldn’t be the last, either. It’s all because of a local late-night TV show on which my partner and I showed monster movies and performed wacky skits for more than forty years. Well, that and my own lifelong habit of trying almost anything for a laugh. And . . . well, there’s more to the story, and it takes some explaining. So maybe I should back up and start at the very beginning …
Tiny Terror
It was a cold winter day in January 1946, and Michael and Anna Rinaldi were expecting their second child, John Anthony Rinaldi—yours truly! I arrived in St. Ann’s Hospital and was taken home to East 110th Street, a Cleveland neighborhood of single- and multi-family homes.
Both my parents came from large families. My mother had fourteen siblings, and my father had five. Many of them lived nearby. My immediate family and I lived on the first floor of a multi-family house. My Aunt Vera and her family occupied the upper floor. Next door lived my grandfather and more aunts and uncles. The front of their house was home to a small lemon ice shop. My grandfather owned the properties, and my family rented from him. I remember him complaining if any of us used too much water. Four-foot-high walls separated the yards, and I never thought twice before jumping over them to get to the next yard—regardless of the large drop on the other side or the fact that taking the sidewalk would’ve been easier.
With so many relatives nearby, it felt like we lived within our own compound. I enjoyed having family nearby, but with so many eyes always watching—sometimes from their porch, sometimes from their kitchen window—it was hard to get away with anything.
My mother said I never gave her a moment’s peace—it was a constant game of cat and mouse. She sometimes tied me to a chair for short periods so she could get the housework done. (People often gasp when I share that.) I was even more of a handful when we were out of the house together. At stores, I was constantly darting off and hiding, while my mother spent twenty minutes or more searching for me. Eventually, she tethered us together so I couldn’t run away (but let’s not call it a leash).
The idea of being “grounded” didn’t exist for us kids. We got spanked. The worst words we could hear were, “Wait until your father gets home.” And that was after our mother had already spanked us. But we wouldn’t make it easy for our parents; we became moving targets. I remember hiding under the bed once while my mother did her best to prod me out with the mop handle.
Early Days
I grew up in a time very much like the one portrayed in the movie A Christmas Story, when the world was simpler and lifestyles were modest, with fewer frills than today. Kids were tight-knit and ruled the streets, and neighbors knew each other and looked out for one another. It was an unspoken rule that if a child misbehaved, any nearby adult had the authority to set them straight.
Specialty shops—corner stores, drugstores, butchers—were within walking distance. For luxury items and non-essentials, like clothes, jewelry, or toys, downtown was where we went. Cleveland had a great mix of department stores and retail shopping—Sterling-Lindner, Halle’s, Higbee’s, May Company, Woolworth’s, and Kresge’s. A trip downtown with the entire family was a big event, with one of the highlights being a visit to the top of the Terminal Tower, a real adventure for ten-year-old me.
Those stores put up incredible window displays to draw people inside, and come the holidays, those windows turned into magical wonderlands filled with toys. Two of my favorite childhood toys were little green plastic army men and cap guns. I recall spending many Saturdays playing cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians. I didn’t mean to hit my cousin so hard on the head with the butt of my gun, but that’s what I saw on TV when someone resisted going to jail. It’s been a long time since those make-believe days, but I still love war stories, westerns, and true crime, and I’m an avid reader of books on these subjects today.
Christmas was always a festive occasion, and I was focused on the gifts waiting under the tree. But as the years passed, I realized the real gift was being surrounded by family. Looking back, I can see that those gatherings defined what the holidays still mean to me today. Christmas Eve was spent with my father’s side of the family; Christmas Day belonged to my mother’s side. But no matter whose house we were in, the experience was the same: lively conversations, a joyful kind of chaos that only a big extended family can create, and the unmistakable smell of food drifting through the air.
Some memories stick out in my mind as if they happened only yesterday. We had a four-foot-tall Christmas tree that we proudly placed on top of a three-foot-high table so it looked as grand as possible. When the season was over, the whole thing—lights, ornaments, and all—went straight into a giant plastic bag, ready for next year. I remember waiting impatiently for my uncle Edward to finish work and show up for the festivities. He always arrived late. I have very little to critique about my father, but he needed help when it came to my mother’s Christmas gift. Every year, she opened a pair of pajamas. But worse, it was the same set from the previous year, rewrapped. That was the entire gift. It wasn’t until we kids were old enough to realize this was a problem that we convinced him to get her something else.
