I have no idea why, but recently I have been thinking about Jimmy Pratt. Jimmy was a drummer. He’s best known for his work with Chet Baker and Baden Powell. The adults that I knew back then were musicians for the most part, friends of my parents when I was a young boy. They were all good and respected players, well known in jazz.
My mom sometimes sang duets with Chet Baker in Europe. Jimmy Pratt was an American living in Milan Italy, at least he was in 1960, because my mother and I lived in his apartment when I was on (boarding) school holiday. His wife Patty was very nice to me. Like an auntie. She was British, if memory serves. I am quite sure about this. Patty Pratt was an English girl with a wonderful and kind persona.
I also recall the mosquitos in their flat. Unforgettable. (Queste zanzare sono una vera scocciatura) Rusty splotches on the wall, from where the little vampires would be struck with newpapers or magazines, by me, Jimmy, Patty or my mom.
I would make it a sport to hunt the little monsters. They had a high pitched wail which made me shiver. When I was sleeping I would keep the covers over my head, even in the unbearable summer heat.
They were terrifying and when they struck, the itch following the sting, that round and pale bump, was more than an inconvenience.
Me in Italy, during the early 1960s.
My mother and I lived in Jimmy Pratt’s apartment in Milano for a while. Mostly I recall the mosquitos and the main train station in Milano where I could buy American comic books. A friendly slice of home in this foreign environment where tiny vampires would fly about at night making high pitched screeches before indulging their appetites. This followed by my hunt and destrcution of the little Bela’s (Lugosi) by comic, newspapaer or magazine.
Always leaving that little red splotch on the wall of my own blood, and the tiny black insect carcass. I would always marvel at how something so tiny could cause such mental anguish and chaos.
After serveral weeks in Milano, my mom accepted some work on a show called “Bussola On Stage,” a tour across Italy, and I went with her, staying in the “Jolly Hotels," a chain like the Holiday Inns. We went around Italy on one-nighters from town to town. She was co-starring on a variety show with local superstars like Gino Paoli, Alighiero Noschese and Peppino DiCapri, these entertaiment world artists who would become my surrogate uncles for a month or so on this gypsy-esque tour.
Me in Italy in the early 1960s on holiday. La Dolce Vita!
After these 6-8 week Italian holidays it was back to school for me. In 1960 I was in boarding school in Switzerland. A school called Aiglon College in the mountains of Switzerland.
Aiglon school student body circa 1961-62. I’m front row, fourth from the left column. (below)
It was sort of a "Lord Of The Flies" experience. Survival of the fittest. Young boys, in an isolated situation, can be both team-like, or cruel. We were only 118 boys in total, ages 9 to 19, with small classes and terrific professors.
Sports Day at Aiglon, 1960 or ‘61. (Below photo)
I’m on the right waiting for the baton, on the left
running is Steve Getz son of Jazz great Stan Getz.
It was different for me. I had been in large classes in New York. I was accustumed to 40 students in a classroom. It’s easy to hide in a big class. In a small group one is exposed, open to direct questions and if unprepared, ridicule.
This intimidation. It does sharpen the wits.
Still, at night I would listen to the New York Yankee games on my tiny transistor radio and touch base with home. The games were broadcast on Armed Forces Radio, which aired globally. A small slice of Americana that I could find in the mountains of central Europe. The radio signal was strong from our mountain top in the town of Villars.
As a child I had always lived close to Yankee Stadium in The Bronx, New York. So the team represented far more to me than sports. It was home. The neighborhood. My young childhood friends were nearby, only blocks away from Yankee Stadium. I was in Europe, but these games were played where I had lived.
I would curse Bill Mazeroski, of the Pittsburgh Pirates team, who broke my heart with his home run. He had beaten my home team, the New York Yankees in 1960 for the championship. I cursed him with the most profane expletives which I whispered into my pillow as my room-mates slept.
It was 1960. Although my hero Roger Maris had won the Most Valuable Player award for the American league, his team The New York Yankees had recieved a drubbing in the "world” series championship games by the Pittburgh Pirates. Baseball’s end of season ultimate showdown for American teams.
Roger Maris was fantastic. Magic. He got me through all my lonely alienated moments, because his stone faced attitude, and lack of emotion was a touchstone for me at a time when my soul was screaming out. Maris was a perfect role model.
He taught me that a person could have success and be normal and humble. Nothing I had experienced in the jazz world of my childhood, filled with professional talented egocentric lunatics, was comparable.
The next year the great Roger Maris would make controversial history by hitting 61 home runs in a single season. A new hig number then and a record which would last for decades,
Greatness is often hated by those unable to achieve it. Humility is often not the best tactic, but I don’t think Maris cared one way or the other. He was unique. One of a kind.
Squeaky wheels get oil. It’s a fact. Lesser players are in the Baseball “Hall Of Fame." Maris was not a whiner. He had natural greatness.
Yes, Maris had it. Greatness. I don’t care what sports writers say.
I thought of Maris often as I battled and defeated so many of the mosquitos of Milano in 1960, with my tightly rolled Archie comic books. Other later battles as well, but that’s another story.
