Gerry and the Vase

We were at my mother’s not long after Mother’s Day when we spotted a vase of roses on the hearth.

“Oh, is that that vase that Gerry peed in?” we asked, and then we all burst out laughing as the memory resurfaced.

Here’s the story.

When I was a child we lived in a four-decker tenement house in Manville.  Since our apartment was on the top floor, our hallway was relatively large and spacious, running a good 12 to 15 feet from front to back and maybe 6 feet across, with our door at one end, a window at the rear, and the open stairwell occupying a chunk of space along one side.

For reasons I’ve never understood (or given much thought to, truth be told) our old white icebox sat at the far end of the hall.  Replaced by the modern, brand spanking new Frigidaire refrigerator around 1948, it was allowed to live out its declining years in dignity with a lace scarf draped across it and a very nice old vase placed dead center on top of that.  It was probably still there when my parents moved out in 1962.

The vase in question was a lovely antique worthy of being called a “vahz.”

V-shaped and made of clear glass, it stood 10” or 12” tall.  I thought it was cut glass, but my mother said it was actually Sandwich glass.  It had been given to her by and old family friend.

Rose Boan and her husband Hillard were a generation older than my parents and the vase had belonged to Rose’s mother.  Rose had grown up locally, but Hill was southern born and bred. When they decided to pull up stakes and move down south, Rose gave my mother the vase to remember her by, and remember her we did.

My Aunt Bea and her family lived right down the street from us, just three houses and a garage away, so even as children we visited back and forth quite freely.

On the fateful day in question we had gone out for the day, returning late in the afternoon.  We were milling about, waiting for my father to unlock the door, when someone happened to glance toward the back of the hall.

“Hey, what’s in the vase?” they asked.

Sure enough, something was amiss.  The vase that had stood empty for years was now filled to a depth of about four inches with a clear, golden yellow liquid.

We rushed over to examine the evidence, all talking at once, babbling and speculating on what it was and how it had come to be there.  That it was urine was soon fairly easily established, but how it got there was a mystery. It was, after all, a fourth floor back hallway, not an area easily stumbled upon by someone with a burning need for relief.

The mystery was solved the following day.

The third floor tenant, a nosy old woman who spent all her free time in the window monitoring the comings and goings at our end of town, had not only seen my young cousin, but had challenged him as he passed her doorway on his way upstairs.

When questioned, Gerry admitted it freely.  He’d decided to drop in for a visit, found us out, and found himself in dire need of a bathroom.  None being available, he did the best that he could under the circumstances.

Given the fact that he was no more than six years old, and given the volume in the vase, his need was obviously great.  We thought his solution to the problem was not only neat (he didn’t spill a drop) and pretty ingenious, but quite humorous as well.  It made us laugh back then, and it continues to tickle our funny bone even now whenever we happen to think about it.