The Bis Key Chronicles

The Glass family is a two-part family:  Jim, Jean and Norma, all born a year apart.  After a 8 year span later Max and Meg appeared. 

We three older ones always did things together as our parents battled the stock market crash of ’29, job crises and the move to Kansas to rescue the grandparents from losing their greenhouse business.  Aunt Mabel, a native Chicagoan, feared for our safety as she believed that we would be killed by the Indians.

We lived in three different locations in and around Chicago.  On a visit to our Gorr grandparents on Roscoe right next to the noisy L (the elevated train) we were left to entertain ourselves so Jim thought up things for us to do.  One of the things we did was to walk up and down the street writing down house numbers which was my introduction to number systems.

Jim had lots of ideas, sometimes with a mischievous bent.  His classmates loved him and I heard stories about how he befuddled and frustrated his teachers with his questioning.  One day when  he was in junior high, which was located on the lower floor of the school building (grades 1-6 were upstairs) he caused a lot of commotion.  I heard by the grapevine that his teacher got so angry that she sent him to the principal’s office where he was beaten very badly and the noises reverberated throughout the 1 st floor classrooms. 

Jim made us laugh with the things he’d think up to do.  In church we kids always tried to sit in one of the back pews.  Sometimes he’d entertain us by catching flies.  He’d swipe his hands sideways to divert the air flow, I think.  Jim was always adept with his hands and one day in church I was surprised when he tore a piece of the bulletin and made a perfect origami bird with flapping wings.  Then he took another bit of the bulletin and make a spitball which he placed strategically in the bird and let it poop on the bulletin.  Those kinds of things always cracked us up.

Jim loved music and one time he decided to teach himself how to play the piano from a book.  We didn’t even have a piano then!  He did take up the trombone and Jean  remembers that after he’d taken up the trombone she’d sit and count for him.  Jean also remembers that he never helped us get dates like a big brother is supposed to do (we thought).

There was a neighborhood trio of junior high age boys: Jim, David (one of the preacher’s kids) and Dennis who called themselves “The Three Muskateers”.  One of their pranks was to hide in a big tree and shoot hair pins with rubber bands at unsuspecting victims, namely Jean and me.  I believe that this was the same trio that put sheet metal of some sort on the street one Halloween night and were picked up by the cops for disturbing the peace.  The cops took them to the jail and called their parents.

Jean and I shared one bedroom and Jim had his own which was locked and boobytrapped so that meddling sisters couldn’t enter.  I believe he put a “do not enter” sign on his door, too.  Jim’s bedroom was a “hands off” bedroom but I recall seeing pin-up pictures on his ceiling.  He spent hours in his bedroom with his stamp collection as well as reading the National Geographic magazines given to us by wonderful neighbors. In high school Jim and the preacher’s kid played chess for hours at a time.

Jim never dated much in high school so Jean and I were flabbergasted when he invited the most attractive and popular girl in high school to the senior prom.  Our dad ordered a gorgeous purple orchid for her corsage.

One of Jim’s first jobs outside of working for our Dad in the greenhouse, was as a paperboy for the Fredonia Daily Herald.