Michael Bloomfield's Early Years

Michael was 22 months older than I and when I was born, he was convinced that I was a puppy. In some way, this perception remained. Our early childhood was spent on the near north side of Chicago. We lived on Melrose Street in an apartment building just off Lakeshore Drive, also known as the Gold Coast. On the other end of the block was our elementary school, Nettlehorst Public School. Near the school were small apartment buildings housing a variety of people from all ethnic backgrounds. Because of the diversity of the neighborhood, our friends were in no way homogenized.

Here is a taste of the growing up in Chicago in the early fifties: The Oscar Meyer Weenie Wagon, which actually was an enormous mechanical hot dog on wheels, would come strolling down the street. Little Oscar (a midget) rode on top and would chuck out sample packs of hot dogs in time with the blaring Oscar Meyer theme song.

Yo-yos were the rage and, at any theater on a Saturday afternoon, the Duncan Master would hold an informal tournament for the kids in the audience. The theater would show twenty cartoons, two serials, a selected short and then the feature. Going to the movies on Saturday was an all day affair. Kids shot marbles, flew balsawood airplanes, played stoop ball, carried pea shooters in their pants and played hand tennis with a Spaulding ball on the sidewalk.

Because Mike and I were so close in age, we shared many friends and roamed as a group. We got around on fat-tired, heavy-weight Schwinn bikes. Michael never bothered with the kick stand and when he reached his destination, he simply dropped his bike right there.

The music we grew up listening to consisted of Broadway show tunes, the Hit Parade Top Ten, Bozo Under The Sea, Tubby The Tuba, and Peter and the Wolf. Our mother was a beauty queen and an actress, and she exposed us to live theater, concerts, epic films and museums. She was just as zany as Lucille Ball and when she signed on as a Den Mother, the Cub Scouts were in for a surprise.

A whole troop of 28 scouts, including myself, was taken on an outing to Captain Midnight's live radio show. For my mother, it was like trying to keep young puppies confined in a yard. We waited for the bus – which took half an hour getting there – and then in single file boarded with our Den Mother bringing up the rear. The driver had yet to see one fare drop in the hopper and said "Lady, who is going to pay for all these kids?"

"Oh, that’s OK, honey, I’ll just write you a check."

"Lady, we don’t take checks."

"Well then, what are we going to do?"

"How about paying in cash?"

"Hmm, let me see. Do you have change for a fifty?"

"No lady, I am only required to make change for ten dollars or less. Besides, I need exact change for each one of them – ten cents each, and yours is a quarter."

"Mr. Bus Driver, I don’t have any change and you’re not being very helpful."

"Lady, how about getting off the bus, we’re running late."

"Wait a second, sir. Do you know what I had to go through getting these boys on this bus? They’re here now, and here they’ll have to stay while I go out and get some change."

"Lady, lady – I am running out of patience!"

With that, my mother hopped out the door, ran to the supermarket and came back with a roll of dimes and started dropping them into the hopper.

We got to the theater just in time for the broadcast. As luck would have it, one of the scouts won a door prize of a small gas-driven airplane. Right in the middle of Captain Midnight's Safety Talk, you heard ... putt-putt-putt ... and the model plane kicked over and flew into the control booth. I learned later that they instituted a new policy after that, namely not to give out planes and to keep Cub Scouts in a special section outside the studio.

And this is God’s honest truth: On the bus ride home we got the same bus driver. My mother greeted him like a long-lost friend and while batting her eyes and patting his arm, broke it to him that she had no more change because the kids wanted sodas. He in turn rolled his eyes and said, ’"Forget it lady, just get them in and sit down."

Michael simply called it relative rivalry. He came to pick up the guitar was because our cousin was given one, and then we both wanted one as well. Michael got a little 3/4-sized Harmony guitar, and he started taking lessons from our mom's hair dresser, a man named Tony Carmen. Tony was an accomplished dance band guitarist, and had a good voice and a sweet nature. He had a trio that included his brother and cousin. They played small gigs and parties around our town of Glencoe and the neighboring suburbs. I started playing along with Michael, but soon put it down, as did our cousin.

Michael, on the other hand, became totally committed to this new activity which not only entertained him but was vast enough to absorb his creative energies and imagination. Tony poured all that he knew into Michael but could not satisfy his student's voracious appetite. I remember Michael got a "cheat book" which had hundreds of songs broken down to their chords, and he devoured each and everyone of them.

Our father was a serious man and others have written that Mike and Dad had very little in common. I remember vividly, though, the night Mike played for our Father. He and Dad were sitting across from each other in this large bedroom and Michael had his book open, lying on the floor. He then proceeded to play all the Rogers and Hammerstein show tunes, and then standards from Dad's time. Our father was economical in speech, but what was unsaid radiated from his face. In that moment, they shared the magic of the music with simple reverence.

I think it was when Michael was fourteen, a year after his bar mitzvah, that he was given a Les Paul Sunburst and amp. For hours on end he would practice without the amp on. On Saturday night he would sit in front of the TV, watching the Lawrence Welk Show and would play along or practice running scales. I never liked watching Lawrence Welk, and I thought Mike was just being his irritating self, but he would patiently wade through all the shitty music for the one guitar moment in the show and would sit there transfixed until it concluded.

He sought out any and all arcane music venues. His record collection included Josh White, Ray Charles, Elvis, Bill Halley and the Comets, the Everly Brothers, Fats Domino, Odetta, Little Richard, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Joe Turner, Big Bill Broonzy, John Lee Hooker, Harry Belafonte and many others. Most of the covers of these albums were ripped and the backs were scribbled on – and seldom did they hold any record at all, let alone the right one.

Michael was coming into his adolescence and had put on enough weight for me to call him "fatso," "lard ass," "fatboy," "grosso mundo," and "pimples," "cater face," "zit puss" and "kink head." As you might have surmised, we fought all the time. There was a weight difference of fifty pounds in his favor and six inches in height. In order to compensate for these differences, I had to arm myself. Slowly I developed and arsenal including a Wammo sling shot, an eight-foot bullwhip, several swords, knives and pellet guns. The moment we went into the pushing mode, I would hightail it to my room, pick up an equalizer and lock the door an wait for the confrontation on the landing. Michael would barrel out, screaming invectives, take one look at what I had and scoot back into his room, to return with something to hurl at me. I would be screaming, "Taste the lash, fat boy!," while he threw books at my head.

After every verbal assault was exhausted, we would retire to our respective rooms. But the conflict was not over in my mind. Patiently I would wait for the knock and, " Alley – hey man, let's forget this. Come on, let's watch Bonanza."

"Mickey, look you go down and get the TV set up, I'll be right there."

Meanwhile, I waited to hear the footsteps going down the stairs and then made a break for his room where the guitar was resting on the bed. Depending upon the severity of the fight, I either would detune all the strings, leaving them drooping on the neck, or clip them off completely with my nail clipper. And if I was really upset, out came the fuse in his amp as well.

So, with this type of warfare, these fights could go on for weeks. Just so that you don't think I was a monster, Michael would sneak into my compulsively neat room and trash it beyond recognition. I went to the hospital several times for stitches in the head from fighting with him. I recall one time when he was so convincing and personally pleasant that he talked me into climbing into the laundry hamper. He promptly jumped up and sat on top of it and stayed there for forty minutes while I screamed, "I can't breath, you fat fuck! Let me out!" He finally hopped off the lid and as he ran back to his room convulsing with laughter, he spat out, "How do you like the coal mine, sucker!"

Early Days, Part II

Michael demonstrates his fire-breathing trick, a stunt he often performed while playing "East-West" with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band in 1966.

Photo courtesy of

Deborah Chesher

Visitors since June 19th, 2002