THE TUXEDO

In the summer of 1940, when my mother was 26 years old, one of the more significant events on her social calendar was a date for a dance at a country club just outside of Philadelphia. The young gentleman who had invited her (whose name has been lost to history), was apparently a country-clubbish sort of guy because (and this is really the only thing I know about him), he was playing tennis a couple weeks before the big dance and, as luck or fate would have it, broke his leg.

“Sophie,” he said to her a few days later, “I'm sorry about this. I know you bought a new dress for this thing. Here, take the tickets. Find a guy who can dance with you. Enjoy yourself.”

At the time, my mother ran a beauty parlor at 9^th and Spruce, in Philadelphia, and she shared her problem with the other girls in the shop. In a nutshell, she needed a date.

Beatrice, the shampoo girl at the time, a woman my mother would later fire, piped up. “My brother Stanley can dance. He's been at college in Michigan, but he's back now.”

“Does he have a tuxedo?” It was the only question my mother asked about Stanley.

“Yes,” said Beatrice.

“OK. Talk to him.”

Stanley and Sophie were married sixteen months later, on December 26, 1941, right before my father's unit shipped out for WWII. My sister was born in late 1942. I was born in 1951. When my father died in 2001, our parents had been married almost sixty years.

My aunt Beatrice eventually forgave my mother for firing her.

A few years ago, when my son Tex was in high school, we bought him a used tuxedo for his birthday, and I shared with him my views on how important it is that a young man have a tuxedo. I told him this story.

“You see, Tex,” I said, “Stanley Kubacki was a young man with some prospects but no money. He did, however, have a tuxedo, and if he had NOT had that tuxedo in the summer of 1940 when his sister came home from work one day and offered him a blind date, well.... Do you see the significance of this story, Tex?”

“If he had not had a tuxedo, my grandmother and grandfather would never have met, would they?”

“Probably not, Tex. And if they had never met, I would not exist.”

He thought about that for a bit.

“Yes,” he said finally. “I see your point.”

Copyright2015MichaelKubacki