Slagg Ditch was raised in McGill next to a notorious waterway. He’s also a WPHS graduate.
I liked to play golf and then join the boys at the McGill Club for a cool one. A regular we called ‘Rummy’ always showed up at five in the afternoon on Fridays. He looked maybe eighty. He’d take a stool at the corner of the bar where he could face us. He’d pour powdered pina colada mix in a glass, and Vic the bartender would add rum and ice.
We often talked about the many successful people who grew up in our town. There were doctors and nurses, generals and admirals, lawyers and judges, bankers and accountants, government officials, and dedicated educators at all levels. Nearly every profession was accounted for.
“Did you know there’s an arcane profession we’ve never mentioned?” Rummy asked our assembled group one day.
Arcane? We asked. Was it something odd like palm or card reading? Practicing magic? Writing novels in Swahili?
“Well,” he said. “It’s arcane, but it’s not odd. The profession has been around for ninety or a hundred years.”
We knew Rummy’s was going to tell us another story about his quirky family. He poured more mix in his glass and began to talk:
“Now, my cousin Aloysius Penrose and his family lived up on H Row close to 2nd Street. Kids called him Penny, but when he went off to college, he insisted on Aloysius. It’s a German word for ‘famous warrior.’
“He was 14 years old when his future life began. He and his dad would be walking down the street or watching a ball game. A pretty girl would walk by, and dad would smile and say, ‘Aloysius, I know what you’re thinking.’ In those formative years, he wondered how his dad knew what thoughts were in his head. That wonderment took up permanent residence in his cerebrum.
“In a psychology class at the university, he learned that there is a profession where the focus of the practitioner is on what the client is thinking. So, in medical school, he focused on the anatomy of the brain and psychiatry.”
Rummy paused and signaled Vic for more ice before he went on with the story:
“On the advice of a professor, Aloysius moved to New York City and opened a practice. Of the eight million people in that city, the professor said, half had seen a psychiatrist or should. Business was good from day one.
“He soon learned that psychoanalysis was where the money was. However, he thought the dream theories of Freud and Jung were downright looney. A client’s description of a dream, for example, might lead to a false diagnosis by a poorly schooled practitioner. Like the guy down the hall who told a client that his frightening dreams were caused by a latent fear of having to write in cursive in the fourth grade. The client sought a second opinion and was told that the dream problem was the result of seeing women’s underwear hanging on a neighbor’s clothes-line.
Nonetheless, Aloysius found that sitting in a comfortable office listening to people talk about their problems wasn’t a bad way to spend time and be well paid.
“He had clients from whom he learned much about the science of the mind. One was a middle-aged lady who was hysterical because when she smiled her lips would unconsciously push upward so far you could look up her nose. After years of therapy, she realized that her problem started when she saw her boyfriend kissing her sister. The two disappeared. Aloysius hired a private investigator who found that the sister had moved in with the pool boy and the boyfriend had registered as a sex offender. This news made her so happy that the lips-to-nose problem went away. As she told Aloysius about her revelations at a therapy session, she began to tug at the hair on her left ear.
“He also noticed that when clients rubbed their noses with the back of their non-dominant hand several times, it was an indication that their mental problems were cured. He wrote an article on his nose-rub and ear-hair theory of mental disorder recovery and sent it to a professional journal. It was rejected for publication, but the fact that it was reviewed by the scholarly publication increased business.
“Aloysius married the daughter of the billionaire owner of a spare tire repair business. Now he lived a life of luxury, far beyond the expectations of McGillians. His wife got him invited to elite cocktail parties and to operas at the Met. Everyone talked about their problems. You didn’t last long in New York social circles, Aloysius told me, unless you were seeing a shrink.
“The marriage fell apart. Given the vast riches of the wife compared to his, the divorce judge awarded him life-time alimony. The wife was awarded custody of the pet dachshund.
“Longing for the quiet of his youth, Aloysius bought the old family house and moved back to McGill. For years, the townsfolk wondered who the reclusive man was who parked his Rolls-Royce in the alley next to the slag ditch. Why did he give the town so much money for the operation of the drug store museum, and to refurbish the library, and to build the urgency care center?”
Rummy sighed and looked at his watch. “I’m proud of ol’ Aloysius,” he said as he finished off his pina colada and left.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” said the skinny old fella down the bar as he worked on a Pabst Blue Ribbon. “I knew Penny when we was kids.”
“He died about ten years ago,” said a Bud Lite.
“Add him to the list of notable folks from our town,” said a gin and tonic.
Vic joined our group on a toast to the late, great Aloysius Penrose.
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