Clamcake, chowder & a top banana

Posted 1/31/17

To the Editor: It was a ritual every time Steve and I came home to Warwick. Steve was the Top Banana, or the comedy star of a show called This Was Burlesque." Steve was a real baggy-pants comic. Ann Corio was one of the original top strippers in the"

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Clamcake, chowder & a top banana

Posted

To the Editor:

It was a ritual every time Steve and I came home to Warwick. Steve was the Top Banana, or the comedy star of a show called “This Was Burlesque.” Steve was a real baggy-pants comic. Ann Corio was one of the original top strippers in the golden age of Burlesque in the ’30s, along with Gypsy Rose Lee and Hinda Wassou. When she wanted to produce a real, old-time Burlesque show, she asked Steve to help put it together. From 1956 until 1977, Steve was the Top Banana, including the times that he shared top billing with Jerry Lester and Pinky Lee.

We married in June of 1966, and went out on the road with the show, from Maine to Florida, over to California and then to Puerto Rico. We performed the show for a few months at a time and, at the end of each run, we came back to Warwick to our house on Wentworth Avenue in the Rivervue section. Previously, the house was owned and occupied by the Mayor of Providence, Mayor Dunn, and his family.

When we came home, there was a set ritual of things that had to be done. First, we would go to Duquettes, the little grocery store in Conimicut, and buy fresh chopped meat. Steve, who saw his father nearly die of food poisoning, in the time of “ice-boxes,” always insisted that anything that we ate had to be fresh and eaten that day. I always wondered why he bought that nice new side-by-side refrigerator with the freezer on one side. He never let me freeze anything except water and ice cream.

Second, we would take the four grandchildren to Rocky Point for clam cakes and chowder. The kids loved this trip. They loved to eat the clam cakes and chowder; those chewy, clammy morsels, and the hot tomato clam chowder, just delicious. All of this was followed by a walk down to the amusements, sideshows, tiny gift shops, picture booths, and the railway…all the sights we loved to see. They loved Rocky Point, but most of all the adored their “Papa.” He made them laugh. He would balance a napkin on his nose. He would use his knife and “shoot” peas like billiard balls. He would yell at passing motorists if they were driving too slow. Most everyone in Warwick knew who Steve was. When in a public place, they would yell out, ‘Hey, Chidrool.” He used that term in all of the burlesque scenes. When we were in Puerto Rico, as we walked through the Condado, a man yelled out that name in the middle of Puerto Rico. Imagine! He didn’t intentionally try to be funny; he just was.

The grandchildren are now in their 50s. They laugh, even now, when we speak of their “Papa” and they shed a tear. I tell them that we must not be sad for his absence these 28 years, but for his presence, that they were lucky enough to enjoy, and for the 22 years that were a gift to me.

Susan Mills

St. Pete’s Beach, Fla.

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