The Last Vaudevillian's Final Post
The guy who portrayed himself here as "Frankie Houlihan" passed away. He was 93 years old. He said of his life that he was a child of vaudeville, a swing era cornet player, a soldier in Uncle Sam's army, a recovered heroin addict, a parochial school janitor, a retiree, the principal dishwasher at the local food kitchen, and a willing listener to anybody willing to listen to him talk. I will throw in another thing. From the time I was 6 till now at the age of 14, he was the only father I had ever known up till that time. Me and my mother met him at the food kitchen when I was 6 and without a second thought he took us in and we lived with him until my mother got her degree and a decent job and could go out on our own to live with a guy who has been as good to us as Frankie.
We buried him the other day and I couldn't believe how many people showed up. We put on a vaudeville at the grave. The park wrestlers did a match, there was the park poet who never got over what happened to him in Vietnam and he screamed out a few things and cried. Frankie's daughter who works at a bank and I did our "loan for a cornet" skit that we did in the vaudeville show that Frankie threw for me when I was 8 at an old abandoned movie house that almost burned down in the process because the park poet freaked out again. I read Frankie's last post here and played Saint James Infirmiry on my cornet that Frankie taught me how to play. There was also a singer Frankie knew, and one old guy who said he knew Frankie years ago as a child and he got up and did a comedy routine that had us all laughing.
The man who made Frankie Houlihan up did it for the people he knew. He had no desire that his identity be known and that is the way it will stay. I know just enough to know that some of it was true, and I believe him when he says the rest doesn't matter. The night he died he told me that the only thing that will ever matter is what you feel inside you and what you make people feel inside them. If a lie can make some one feel better then screw the truth. The last thing he said to me before I went home was something he often said in different ways. Don't pay too close attention to all the details, you will miss too much of what life has to offer. We should leave it at that.
I would like to extend my condolences to you and to those who loved
"Frankie". You must be "the boy" whom he wrote about with such affection.
I appreciate your letting those of us who knew Frankie via the internet
know of his passing. His send-off sounded like something he would have
loved and appreciated.
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