The Lay-Away Christmas

November 25, 2005

The name “Skippy Burke” is not one I ever heard when I was a child growing up on Boggs Run, not far from Wheeling, West Virginia. Yet, the name seems like one I should have heard because the bearer of the name taught my dad about some very important elements of good character: honesty, integrity and trustworthiness.

After he graduated from Union High School in Benwood in 1941, Dad worked at the Murphy’s 5 & 10 store on Market Street in Wheeling. He worked ten hours a day, six days a week, for $12 a week. From there he went to work in the shipping office at Wheeling Steel in Benwood, where he earned the labor rate, 78 cents an hour.

Dad said he was an 89 pound kid when he enlisted in the Navy in the fall of 1942 to serve in World War II. But by the time he got out three years later, he was a man -- a man who had been to places he had never wanted to go, seen things he had never wanted to see.

He was also married. While stationed at Providence, Rhode Island, upon his return from the Pacific, he had married Mom, a sixteen year old Wheeling girl, whom he barely knew and didn’t love.

The postwar years were a struggle for most people and Mom and Dad were no exception. Dad returned to his job in the shipping office at Wheeling Steel, making $1.04 an hour, but he wanted to learn a trade. On the G. I. Bill, he was paid $97 a month, plus 50 cents an hour, as he served a three-year apprenticeship to become a welder.

While he was learning his trade, Sam was born at the end of 1946 and, unplanned, I was born thirteen months later.

And since they had to have a place to live, after Sam was born, Mom and Dad bought a house and five acres on Boggs Run from Dad’s Uncle Herman for $2500. Prior to that, they had lived at Dad’s parents’ house on Brown’s Run (off Boggs Run), sharing the two upstairs rooms with two of his sisters and their husbands.

Things were tough financially. Mom’s teeth rotted out while she was pregnant with me and she had to start having them all pulled. In 1949, I had a tumor on my eyeball and had to have surgery at Wheeling Clinic. – Always something.

And it was during those hard times that Skippy Burke taught Dad an important lesson.

Dad had an old car, a necessity since we lived way up the run, at the bottom of Sherrard hill, about 5 miles from Wheeling. That car might be the same one with the truck bed that we used to haul ice for the ice box from Niebergall’s Ice House in South Wheeling. It was probably the same car he had when the steering wheel came off as he was driving us up the run one time. He surprised Mom by handing her the steering wheel and saying, “Here, Ruthie!”

And it was definitely the same car Dad drove when he picked up Skippy Burke every day and drove him to work at Burke’s Auto Stores, 1067 Main Street, Wheeling.

Skippy’s real name and address are not known at this time, nor is his status at the Burke automotive business. Maybe he was the owner or maybe he just worked there. Whatever the case, he is unquestionably the man who was responsible for our ‘Lay-Away Christmas,’ probably about 1949.

Dad thought nothing about picking up Skippy every day on his way to Wheeling and dropping him off at work. I don’t know how well he knew Skippy but he must have liked him alright, maybe even called him a friend. And when Skippy offered to put some Christmas toys on lay-away for Dad at Burke’s Auto Stores, with no payment until after Christmas, Dad took him up on it. He selected a few toys, paid a deposit and put them on lay-away. Skippy said he could pick them up on Christmas Eve day.

As usual, Christmas was an exciting time for Mom and Dad. Their love for each other grew with each new struggle and Christmas was a time to celebrate their blessings of the year.

On Christmas Eve day, Mom was probably cleaning and thinking about all she had to do. Dad was at work and on his way home he would stop and get the toys. He would also stop and get the groceries for the week.

But when Dad arrived at Burke’s Auto Stores, 1067 Main Street, Wheeling, he was told that his ‘Lay-Away’ toys had to paid for in full before he could have them.

Skippy Burke was real sorry but that’s just the way it was.

Feeling deceived, not to mention outraged, foolish and humiliated, Dad used the grocery money to pay for the toys for his two babies. Sure, he could have left the toys and bought the groceries….

He never mentioned Skippy Burke in our house again.

But the ghost of the experience with Skippy Burke stayed with Dad for the rest of his life. It was the ‘Lay-Away’ toy experience that helped to chisel away his idealistic worldview - that had largely survived World War II – as he learned that not every man’s word could be trusted, not everyone was acquainted with the values of kindness, honesty and integrity.

No longer naïve, Dad resolved to never again buy something he couldn’t afford to pay cash for. With the exception of small loans for the modest home on Boggs Run and later a trailer in Allendale, he never bought on credit, never asked anyone for anything, never accepted anything free without compensating in some way.

Before Dad died in 2000, he said he knew his parents and family had respected him and he respected himself. He said there were a thousand times when he was desperate for money and he knew that his parents would have loaned him some – or even given it to him. And that probably would have been the case with the ‘Lay-Away’ toys, as well. But Dad said that if he had taken money from his dad, he could never have looked his dad in the eye again, and his dad would have lost all respect for him.

The ‘Lay-Away’ at Burke’s Auto seemed like an alternative that Christmas season. But when it exposed the risks of being at the mercy of someone, of accepting a man’s word, particularly when money was involved, Dad made this resolution: “Cash & Carry.”

In the year before Dad’s death in 2000, the 'Lay-Away Christmas' was still a vivid memory. He said it helped put him on a track in life that led him and Mom to manage on their own, “beholden to nobody.” They had no debt, and although they never had many material things in their lives, they had the satisfaction of knowing that what they had, they owned. Dad was proud of his life, proud that his children viewed him as an honorable man whose word was as good as a mountain of gold.

And in the end, as the name of Skippy Burke slid off Dad’s tongue for perhaps the first time in 50 years, he seemed almost grateful to Skippy for the experience of our ‘Lay-Away Christmas.’

Who Skippy Burke was, why he deceived Dad, what happened to him, or what kind of life he had, are questions without answers. But since leopards don't change their spots, one thing is for sure: In terms of good character, Skippy Burke was no Jack Cunningham.