The Bookie's Daughter (3 page)

My father, Joseph Albert Bashure Abraham, was born on January 7, 1931 in the apartment home of his parents, at 701 Clay Avenue. Fifty-two years later, in the arms of his youngest daughter, he would slip into a coma from which he would not recover in an apartment next door.

The fourth of eight children and second son of Syrian immigrants, Jennie (Jamily) and Bashure Esber Abraham, Al was raised in an Arabic-speaking household. Given that Jeannette’s factories attracted blue-collar workers, a large portion of its residents were immigrants from such countries as Russia, Belgium, Syria, Ukraine, Poland, Greece, Germany, and Italy. Languages from faraway lands were commonly heard on the streets of Jeannette, a microcosm of the American melting pot.

Although my grandmother’s primary language was Arabic, she learned enough English to establish herself as a midwife in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania. She would never become fluent in English though, and her children, especially my father and his elder siblings, often spoke to her in her native Arabic. Eventually, she and Bashure, a worker in one of Jeannette’s factories, saved enough money to purchase a commercial/residential building at 701 Clay Avenue.

Al was a large, robust baby and the apple of his mother’s eye. My grandmother ruled both her household and her son with an iron fist. A woman of determination, strength, and the kind of fearlessness usually attributed to men, Sitto, as my sister and I called her using the colloquial Arabic word for “grandmother,” was a force to reckon with. Always adventurous, Sitto had traveled extensively throughout the Middle East before immigrating to the United States. As a child, I was fascinated with photos of her exploratory travels, and was especially taken with a series of photos from her trip to Egypt. My favorite had Sitto sitting astride a camel, posing in front of the Great Pyramid of Giza.

Even after immigrating to the United States, Sitto continued to travel back to her homeland when family matters necessitated her presence. My father’s older brother, Don, was born on an ocean liner in international waters as Sitto was journeying to Syria for a last reunion with her dying father. Far along in her pregnancy but desperate to make the journey to see her beloved father, she misled shipping officials about her due date. Halfway across the Atlantic, her labor pains began. Assisted by the captain of the ship, she gave birth to a son, whom she named after the gallant Captain Donald. I always loved this story, as it demonstrates my grandmother’s bravery and dedication to her family.

A bright woman who forever felt the stigma of having no formal education, she was determined that her children would have the opportunities she had craved. According to Sitto, girls in late nineteenth-century Syria, as in much of the world, were often deprived of an education and instead were taught to care for the family herds and household. Sitto’s brothers were sent off to school but she was denied the privilege. Years later, she would reveal to my father’s oldest and dearest friend, Joetta, that one of her brothers had secretly taught her to read using the family Bible. Having only rudimentary reading skills in Arabic and next to none in English, Sitto determinedly focused upon her children’s future.

As a child, I used to imagine that my gutsy grandmother had left her country under scandalous circumstances and was hiding a terrible secret, as information about our family in Syria was next to impossible to extract from my aunts and uncle. Secrecy was universally endorsed in my father’s family. The youngest of Sitto’s children may have wanted to detach themselves from the stigma of belonging to an immigrant family, while the older siblings acted as if they were hiding from a danger only they could perceive. Questions regarding our family history either went unanswered or we received multiple, conflicting answers. Curious about the exotic lands from which our ancestors came, my sister and I were forever making inquiries and almost always encountered a brick wall. No matter how innocent the query, my father and his siblings would deflect our questions with a standard answer: “That’s the past; you need to look to the future.”

Even though she retained strong ties with the family she left in Syria, Sitto was resolute that her children embrace the wonderful possibilities of growing up as Americans. Sitto held sacred her US citizenship, which came second in importance only to her Christian faith. In Sitto’s kitchen—the center of her home and the place she spent much of her time making stuffed grape leaves, Syrian flat bread, kibbeh, and a variety of other Arabic fare—hung two prominent pictures frames. One held a painting of Jesus Christ and the other her American naturalization certificate.

Before starting school, my sister and I spent a lot of time with our grandmother. As a result, we were relatively fluent in Arabic. For Sitto, our bilingual proficiency was fine within the confines of our home. Once we went off to first grade, however, she feared that our knowledge of Arabic would mark us as immigrants. As with her children, Sitto wanted her grandchildren to be “pure Americans.” After we entered school, any attempt to speak in her native tongue was rewarded with a swift smack to the side of the head accompanied by a warning to “speak American.” As a result, Vanessa and I have retained little of the Arabic we spoke so easily as children.

Having lost his father at a young age, my father grew up in a household dominated by females. Sitto and the eldest sisters doted on him, while his younger sisters vied for his attention. A large child from birth, it was soon apparent that Al was growing at a rate much faster than his playmates. Photos of him in middle school show an extremely tall boy who dwarfed his classmates. He was also above average in intellect, dominating all of his classes from an early age and continuing to do so for the rest of his academic career.

As one may expect, my father’s size led to an early recruitment to play high school football. His feats on the football field were so great that team members would toss him the ball at the first possible opportunity. Al would then head for the goal line, often carrying numerous members of the other team with him. He was simply so big that it would take half a team to tackle him. Standing at 6 feet 3 inches in senior high, Al was also weighty. He hit 300 pounds by his senior year of high school, and this was only a fraction of the size he would eat his way to by the time I was born in 1963. Like gambling, food was an addiction that began in my father’s formative years.

Football was an Abraham family affair. Although Al’s football career ended when he began college, his older brother was talented enough to achieve a short stint in the college arena. The Abraham boys enjoyed the play of sport, though their contributions were not especially notable. Their hometown of Jeannette, on the other hand, holds a prestigious place in the annals of the sport, as the city competed in the first professional football game. On September 3, 1895, the Latrobe YMCA played the Jeannette Athletic Club in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. Latrobe won 12-0, but Jeannette’s love affair with everything football lived on, producing such football notables as Mike Getto, all-American at the University of Pittsburgh 1928; Jack O’Brien, Pittsburgh Steelers (1954–56); Dick Hoak, Pittsburgh Steelers running back (1969–70) and running backs coach (1972–2006); Steve August, offensive tackle for the Seattle Seahawks (1977–84) and Pittsburgh Steelers (1984); Mark Brasco, kicker for the University of Pittsburgh (1984–88); and most recently, Terrelle Pryor, quarterback for the Ohio State Buckeyes (2008–10) and Oakland Raiders (2011–present).

After a short stint in college football, my Uncle Don returned to Jeannette and opened up a pool hall in a storefront a block from the Abraham family building. Al, now in his teens, left the employ of other pool hall bookies and worked as his brother’s right-hand man. Gambling had become a family business.

When not playing football, Al was usually in the company of his brother and other gamblers. Locals would gather to discuss which team (football, baseball, hockey, or basketball, depending on the season), horse, or number they were going to bet on that day. They often regaled each other with tales of success at the poker table or at the horse track.

On the occasion that Don did not have work for him, Al sold newspapers, comic books, punchboards, and other items on the street corners, or went door to door up Clay Avenue selling his wares. His determination and prowess in sales earned him the name “Huck,” short for huckster. The combination of his charismatic, carefree personality and confident sales abilities made him a formidable salesman. Money would always come too easily to him.

When not working at the pool hall or peddling his wares, Al spent his time reading and trading comic books, collecting train sets, and stealing into the local theater to watch the latest movie. As I child, I used to watch my larger-than-life father sit like a young boy, playing with the train sets he gleefully set up around the family Christmas tree. Although twice the size of most men, he never lost his childish exuberance and often acted more adolescent than adult. He was a consummate optimist, always seeing his glass as half-f and an opportunity around every corner.

Al’s outstanding scholastic achievements seemed to come effortlessly, as he spent a bare minimum at study and yet was always at the top of his class. His academic passion was science, and he loved math, biology, and chemistry. Years later, when he found me studying for chemistry class, Al excitedly recited—from memory—every element in the periodic table according to its atomic number.

His mathematical abilities were also astounding. He rarely had to work a problem out on paper but could “see the math problems” in his head. He liked to keep these skills honed and would challenge anyone to test him by calling out random numbers as they entered them into the calculator—not just simple addition and subtraction, mind you, but division and multiplication thrown in at random. Al would always have the correct answer, often before the calculator could complete its computation. These mathematical skills also came in handy when it came to counting cards, which he learned during his years working in various pool halls. He had an uncanny ability with cards and would often know exactly which cards his opponents held in their hands. These talents would prove useful to a life dominated by gambling.

Per Sitto’s wishes, Al graduated as valedictorian of Jeannette’s High School class of 1949, his future bright with the promise of a college education and a successful career thereafter. Starting college at the University of Pittsburgh that August, he pursued a degree in chemistry. Two years into his degree, my father met my mother, Bonnie Jean Martin. After a whirlwind courtship, the two married in the spring of 1951. With a wife to provide for, Al dropped out of college and secured a job as a chemist in a factory in Cleveland, Ohio.

Sitto was furious with my father and quickly developed a dislike for her daughter-in-law, whom she saw as a beautiful but dangerous interloper. Her ire would increase a few months later when my father left his job in Cleveland and moved back to Jeannette. The timing of their arrival coincided with the impending departure of Sitto’s commercial tenant. After settling into an apartment with his wife on the upper part of Clay Avenue, Al took over the family storefront and opened Al’s Bargain Center, which would become the primary stage for this memoir.

In no time, Al’s Bargain Center became a local success, increasing its sales with an ever-expanding array of goods. Despite operating a very lucrative business, my father immediately turned his gaze toward his beloved childhood companion—gambling. At first, Al only booked the daily number, a convenience for the many “players” who could easily stop by the store en route to a shift at the nearby factories. Eventually the daily number expanded to booking the sport of the season. After that, there was no stopping his appetite for gambling or his expansion into the gaming business. Within the next few years, he set up a mini-casino in the back room and began to host poker games in the basement of the store. Raids, arrests, scandals, and trials would soon follow.

“
Marriage is neither heaven nor hell, it is simply purgatory.”

Abraham Lincoln

My parents were magnificent creatures, full of promise and passion, when they first married. By the time my sister and I were born, however, their lives were ruled by their addictions. Al’s dark passengers were gambling and food, my mother’s alcohol and speed. If it were possible to classify danger, chaos, and violence as addictions, then I would assign those compulsions to both. My parents seemed to revel in the chaotic danger that was so often present in our lives.