thestripper

The Stripper
Rick Van Weelden

From the time I was very young, I spent my summers vacations, as well as much of the school year, with my grandmother.
In those days, since I was registered in a school near my parent's home, but outside my grandmother's district, I could not go
to public school while living with my grandmother. The reason I lived with my grandmother had to do with problems my
parents had that are outside the scope of this narrative.
    It simply is the case that my grandmother's house was a much better environment for me and I was fortunate that she was
willing and able to have me. I believe it saved me from much that was the fate of many children in my neighborhood who did
not have a loving grandmother to step in and provide what was needed.
   Still, my father wanted to be involved in my life. He could not visit me in the evenings because had to go home at night to
care for my five younger sisters that still lived at home with my mother. However, He felt if a boy was not going to school he
should be going to work. So, I often worked with him in his small construction company. And, the more my father came to get
me to go to work, the less I went to school. It wasn't planned that way, it simply was a temporary solution that became an
ongoing pattern.. That's how, more or less, it was that I grew up with construction crews, a sprinkle of public schools and my
grandmother's tutoring. It all made for some unusual childhood experiences.
    My Dad would drive up in his dark blue, Chevrolet flat-bed truck, with the removable side rails—side rails that were
straining under the pressure of the planks and ladders and tube scaffold and the big Mixer and the mud boxes and mud
boards, brooms, shovels, hoes, toolboxes, buckets and whatever else I would soon be unloading for the job.
     A plasterer’s laborer works hard, but I loved being with my Dad and his crew. And, although he never said as much, I
think my Dad liked it too.
     My grandmother and I would be talking after breakfast and I would hear him tap out two light honks on the horn. She
would hand me my lunch bag; I would tuck it in my left elbow like a football, bolt for the door with my right arm stiff and push
my hand just above the spool handle of the old screen door as I ran out.
     As I look back at that I think about the chipped and peeling white paint on that door. I did not notice how badly it needed a
paint job back then. I just pushed it open and ran through the doorway. The old spring on the screen door didn't always pull
it back with a whack as it once did. If I didn't hear the whack of the door I would whirl around and help the door seat itself by
sliding it through its equally weathered door jamb to the door stop. Once seated, I ran down the walk past the circle of rocks
that were the perimeter of a flower garden with a peach tree in the middle, jumped over the four steps down to the city walk
and ran to the curb to go off to work with my father.
     It was a small company, about eight or nine men, but the white letters on the dark blue truck said “Richard Van Weelden
Sr. Plastering Contractor” so he was his own boss. That’s why he could do things like occasionally take the crew to the
Wisconsin State Fair.
He was proud of the company he worked so hard to build. And, he took great pride in the work he did. People were always
very nice to us and happy with what he did for them. Today, I’m told, the biggest problem in contracting is litigation, but back
then our biggest problem was that male owners often wanted to help us too much and the female owners often made the men
so much food and lemonade that they didn’t feel like working. I guess things have changed and it’s a different culture today.
I had been brought up immersed in my grandmother’s love of books and theatre and old movies and even Vaudeville type
Burlesque. So, I often talked about movies and books and shows and things that I had experienced with my grandmother.
Of course, I never got to see a real Vaudeville, or Burlesque show, but I did get to see some real vaudevillians in a salute to
Burlesque that came with the Wisconsin State Fair one summer. One of my friends told me about the show and I nagged my
Dad until one day he told the crew that if we started at 5:30 A.M. on the next day and skipped lunch, and if we were on
schedule for completion of the house, we all could go to the State Fair at 1:00 P.M.
Moreover, the company would pay the Fair's admission for anyone on the job that wanted to go with us. Back then
“favoritism” was not as acceptable as it is today. My father did not want anyone to get the idea that I got special treatment.
About half or the crew went. My father came from Dutch and German farmers who were strict fundamentalist Christians. Many
of the men were also Fundamentalists and felt “Burlesque” was a sinful thing. The others agreed that it was sinful, but said
that’s why it was fun. And, my father laughed and said that he thought it was harmless. He said he was sure the people at the
fair would not allow anything so sinful a crew of plasterers would be ruined for watching it, and it would be a way to have fun
without a hangover that kept people from coming to work.
Pete said he wasn’t going to watch a present unwrapped when someone else got the gift. He had a perfectly good present at
home, and he got to play with it after it was unwrapped. All the men laughed, and I too understood why he might like to get a
present more than see a lady strip and a comic tell jokes, but not really why that was funny or why he did not just open his
present after the fair. But I laughed anyway so it looked like I did understand.
The Burlesque tent cost a whole dollar and the men were starting to balk. It had a huge canvas sign hanging on the outside
that boasted a baggy-pants comic who was once part of the vaudeville circuit—it showed a giant hobo clown painted right on
the canvas. That hobo clown was very exciting to me. But by then I realized it was the lady the crew had come to see, so I
convinced my Dad and the crew to go in by pointing out the sign next to the entrance of the tent. It showed a lifesized picture
of “Delilah.” That photo made silent promises that turned the dollar ticket into the bargain of a lifetime.
While I marveled at the baggy pants comedian pictured on the canvas, my Dad and the crew silently studied the life-size
photo outside the entrance. The platinum blonde bombshell stood erect and smiling, complete with white feather fan and
gloves her eyes sparkled as she seem to stare right at us and say “Come on in and have fun; I’m so glad you came.” Even I
had to agree she was surely the most beautiful woman in the entire world.
The comedian was first. He was dressed like a hobo and he told jokes and tripped a few times. Once, his pants fell down.
Then, when he bent over to pick them up, his rear end hit a hot stove and he did a summersault and sat in a bucket of
water.
We knew the bucket was filled with water because he had dipped a cup in it and taken a drink earlier in the act. But
somehow later when he threw the bucket of water into the audience, it had transformed into little bits of paper. It was all pretty
amazing.
I tried to memorize the comedian’s routine so I could do it at work later. I couldn’t remember it all. But the next day I still told
all the workers that did not go with us about the whole show. I did as much of the baggy pants routine for them as I could.
They were laughing and never knew the difference.
It may seem odd that I did the baggy pants routine during lunch, but they were used to that kind of thing with me. I stole from
every comedian I saw. I used to do Shelly Berman’s telephone routine and Henny Youngman and even Bill Cosby’s “Why is
there Air?”
I took more grief about my singing. Although, I certainly did not sing for the crew, it was not uncommon to see me dancing
down the temporary construction steps and leaping into the room from a few steps up while singing a tune from Showboat or
West Side Story or My Fair Lady or whatever, then doing the monkey over to the mixing machine where I was mixing.
Fortunately, no one saw that very often.
Nor could anyone hear me singing over the sound of the mixer’s motor, but they knew what I was doing none-the-less. I had
been doing it since I was a kid and they were all pretty used to it. And, for that matter so was I, so I didn’t really feel like I was
doing anything that unusual. But, none of that mattered the day after the fair, what everyone, even the Christian guys, really
wanted to hear about was “Delilah.”
On the way out of the show, I had pleaded with my father to lend me the price of her picture. And now, I was in the glory that I
anticipated the picture would provide me. I was the only one that had a picture and I made them all beg for a glimpse. They
drooled over her, just as I knew they would, as I showed them my autographed 8x10 glossy of “Delilah,” surely the most
beautiful woman any of them had ever seen, a woman who I, and a few other lucky souls in the room, had seen nearly naked.
Delilah was called a “stripper,” but once inside, we were a little worried. She was wearing quite a lot of covering—white
feathers, gloves, a sparkling coat, a sparkling swim suit and high heels. At first we feared the holy rollers had gotten to the
fair people and the whole thing was going to be a waste of time. But, to the great relief of those men who had paid a whole
dollar to get in, the coat and feathers were pulled off and thrown back stage almost immediately.
Through most of the act, she wore the sparkling silver, swim suit that revealed little more than could be seen at any beach or
modern TV variety show. And no matter how much the current MIlwaukee mob's feet stomped on the already stomped down
grass and dirt floor orhow hard their hands hit the benches, she took her own sweet time taking it off. Still, all the while she
succeeded in sending out the message that she was eventually going to be taking in all off.
With a few suggestive dance moves in conjunction with her completely innocent facial expressions, she was able to get
grown men howling and cheering for more, and she was certainly able to set my eleven-year-old heart racing and my wide
eyes straining.
  To this day I can see her pulling off her gloves and doing her dance, while strutting back and forth on that stage. Then
suddenly she was holding that sparkling silver suit that she had somehow magically taken off in the time it took her to turn
around once. We knew there was nothing beneath the suit because we had seen her flawlessly beautiful bare back.
When she faced us both of her extraordinarily beautiful feminine hands held the sparkling suit just below that swelled
cleavage. I looked at her huge, dark fluttering eye lashes and I followed that perfect complexion, save one beauty mark near
her pouting lips, down her magnificent throat to those two perfect swells now staining to escape the pressure her wide spread
fingers pressed against them as she bent her knees, turned her head sideways and looked up at the ceiling in mock surprise
and modesty.
The stage was drenched in a blue light that made the dangling costume light up with hundreds of blue sparkles. I was
awestruck. I can still smell the “Old Spice” after shave my dad had brought and all the men had splashed on themselves after
washing up in a bucket of water, and I can hear the deafening cheers and whistles and whooping and hollering that broke
out amongst the men in that tent when she smiled then let the suit partly fall revealing one; entire perfect breast, with but a
lone blue tassel of tinsel covering the critical area. She blew us a kiss with her now free left hand; I had not expected the
tassel. Apparently, these were not the innocent wardrobe accidents she pretended. But, I was too breathlessly awestruck to
worry about it.
When that one side of the suit had dropped, I think I actually gasped. As she left the stage, I thought it was over and I was
thinking to myself how I never imagined that women wore tassels under their swimming suits when, suddenly, absolute
pandemonium broke out. Her right arm came back out from behind the curtain and she was holding the sparkling swimming
suit with her fingertips.
She then stepped out and twirled the suit above her head and threw it back into the curtains beside her; drums were
pounding; symbols were crashing; horns were blaring, all loudly and in time to the swivel in her hips as she marched to the
other end of the stage and back into the middle, then, as drums rolled and symbols sounded, she put her arms behind her
head and somehow danced in a way that got those two tinsel tassels spinning and everything else she had jiggling and
moving in one direction or another until it was a sight causing such a frenzy in that tent that it would not be sustained for long
without evolving into a riot or certainly at least a few cardiac arrests.
Then the crescendo of horns and symbols. She planted her legs hard, wide and strait and reached out her hands to the sky,
she was magnificent. Every man in the tent was on his feet screaming, hats were flying, people were jumping up and down
and standing on and stomping the benches.
She then bowed and calmly skipped off the stage blowing us kisses all the way. Dad’s employees were screaming so loud I
thought some really had lost their minds; I know several lost their voices.
The next day, most of the crew said I was telling it as it was, except a guy they called “Irish” who swore she was looking right
at him through the whole show.
For me, it didn’t matter, I will never forget “Delilah” and my first exposure to fine arts.