Episode 7- Secrets from My Twilight Zone
The search for John O’Toole
If this is your first encounter with my story, you may want to start at the beginning here: Secrets from My Twilight Zone.
The internet had been serving me well in digging up family history. So, I plugged in my great-grandmother’s maiden name to search the Pittsburgh newspapers. That’s when I first encountered him. He was one of the first distant relatives who led me down one of the deepest rabbit holes of my life.
The sky was cloudy above the bustling streets of smoky Pittsburgh that day, and John O’Toole (friends called him Jack) was chasing his dreams just like any other man. It was June 1931, amid Prohibition and the Great Depression. Great and terrible things were happening. Despite the struggling economy and delays, several tall skyscrapers were going up in Pittsburgh, including Pitt’s towering Cathedral of Learning.
Jack’s father, Patrick, had been a railroad man who died of pneumonia in 1905, the year Jack was born. Jack had a job with the railroad too, until the Depression hit. He was lucky to find work as a painter in a fancy downtown building where his mother, Rose, had been head janitress for several years. Rose begged and cajoled her brother-in-law, who had an office in the building. Jack didn’t have much experience painting, just the occasional touch-up around the O’Toole family home. His uncle put in the word for him, just as he had done for Rose when her husband died. Jack had a wife and a toddler. They rented an apartment on the South Side along the river. His wife Myrtle just had a baby girl a few months earlier. Jack had a family to feed and needed the dough.
I’ve got responsibilities. I wonder what would Dad think of me now?
He hopped off the seven-cent streetcar at Fourth and Wood, Pittsburgh’s financial district, happily dodging raindrops and zigzagging between Model A’s, Chevys and Buicks, and whistling as he headed to the Benedum-Trees office building. He felt an odd emptiness in his pocket, and then in his heart, as he realized that all he had left was a quarter. Little did Jack know his life was about to change forever.
A newsboy on the street corner chanted out a headline:
Al Capone pleads guilty to tax evasion!
As Jack scooted up the few steps and entered the swanky vestibule, he admired the shiny art deco brass clock atop the building directory in the narrow marble lobby, and the ornate brass mail chute against the opposite wall by the elevator. Someone had turned up a radio. Bing Crosby’s latest hit Out of Nowhere wafted out into a glistening wet Fourth Avenue as the glass front door whispered open and closed as people came and went. Through the doors, he could see the majestic bank across the street with its massive columns and two life-sized lions guarding its entrance. While up on a workman’s scaffolding inside, he noticed splattered white paint down on the freshly polished metal.
Can’t let that happen.
So, as he climbed down to wipe the brass clean and pulled out his paint rag reeking of turpentine, he also jerked out his last quarter from his pocket overalls. The coin hit the marble floor with a metallic click that echoed as if in a deep cavern. It rolled on its serrated edge, as if it had a mind of its own, and headed to the elevator where it promptly dropped down a slit at its threshold, into the unknown depths of the elevator shaft.
Bouncing down a bottomless abyss, the coin was likely lost forever. Maybe he was thinking he could have used that quarter to see a movie or to buy lunch. More likely he didn’t want to look irresponsible with his money, particularly since his mother was head janitress of the building. He didn’t want to have to ask for car fare home after all she had done for him to get him the job, and he sure didn’t want to walk home in the rain after a day of painting. He was hoping it would let up. How could he face Myrtle and the kids?
I gotta get that quarter. Myrtle will never let me hear the end of it.
He asked Isaac Pavlov the elevator operator to hold the car while he attempted to retrieve his quarter somewhere down in the pit at the bottom of the shaft. Isaac gave him a three-fingered salute,
Sure pal,
and Jack climbed down into the darkness. He clicked on his borrowed flashlight and waved its beam to scan the gray floor. The piercing beam caught a glint of something, was it the very quarter he let fall from his fingers just a moment earlier?
Well, today must be my lucky day.
He reached down to pry the coin out of the dust-covered floor and stuffed the coin safely back into his pocket. Then something else caught his attention. The hum of an electric motor for the elevator cables and wheels whirred above him, pulling the elevator car upward, toward the 18th floor. He had to get out of there. He scampered toward the light at the exit, looked up, and in a few microseconds the elevator’s half-ton counterweight hurled down. Everything went black.
Isaac the elevator man had dutifully answered his bell, just doing his job. The car shot up the 18 stories while its massive black counterweight rode gravity down the vertical tunnel on its cable, silent as a whisper, a black feathery angel striking the painter out of nowhere. His lifeless body was taken to the city morgue, and that quarter was found in John O’Toole’s pocket. He had been killed instantly. His story made the front page of the evening papers across the state of Pennsylvania and beyond.
*
Next thing you know it’s 2019. Pittsburgh is now starkly more modern and cleaner, though still a wet, gray, and cloudy metropolis. Some things never change. The haunting melody of Bing Crosby's Out of Nowhere fades into oblivion.
Standing at the threshold of a slightly cluttered yet serene office, I was a silver-haired and goateed psychotherapist who had just concluded a session with a cocky teenage client. I peered through bifocals, focused on my electronic tablet, despite playful teasing from the kid as I was closing my office door. Goodbye, Colonel! the teen happily quipped. I cracked open the door and responded with a touch of sarcasm and a smirk, And finger-lickin' good, too! (Yes, I look a little like Colonel Sanders.) Although I enjoyed the playful banter, I closed the door, listened for that firm click, and returned to my desk with my eyes glued to the tablet as I searched the internet for answers.
I scrolled through page after page of historical data, and the newspaper article caught my attention. There was that name again: O'Toole. Could he be a distant relative?
Killed Saving 25-Cent Piece was the poignant headline. I re-read the brief article over and over again on the front page of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. This painter had lost his life in a freak accident while trying to retrieve his quarter from the shaft. Morbidly curious about the details, I wondered what led this particular O’Toole to risk his life for a mere quarter. How did his death affect those around him?
As a psychotherapist, I knew that every story held layers of complexity, depth, and meaning, and I was eager to explore the tragic death of John O'Toole for any insights it could offer into my family history. So, I imagined what his last day must have been like until his last breath, based on the facts I had. Could we be related? That would mean I’d have to dig even deeper into Mom’s history. She had been dead for twenty-five years, and my younger brother Russell had died suddenly in 2018. Little did I know, that the curiosity sparked by John O'Toole's tragic story would lead me on another unexpected journey into the intricate threads and my genetic connection to family history. I wasn’t getting any younger, so I needed to get cracking.
Secrets from My Twilight Zone is a version of my personal story. It is inspired by true events. However, characters, dialogue, and some events have been fictionalized for dramatic purposes.
Wow!