The Story of Joey Wiseheart

Put on your sunglasses because this story is so full of brightness and joy that you might become blinded....oops, I mean visually impaired. 

I'm sitting here very late tonight smoking my pipe by a raging fire.  You will be saddened to learn, dear reader, that I am more than a trifle worried. Outside my home there is a particularly nasty thunderstorm raging and a short while ago, I got to thinking about how I had left my car parked in the driveway.  It occurred to me what a tremendous beating it might take from this hellish clamor.   Further, the dog was outside and howling furiously to get in.   

As I am a most caring man, I awoke my son Tenderheart and had him go move the car into the garage and to bring the dog into the backyard and stay with him so that I won't be bothered so much by his hideous yelping.  

However, when he complained (and, I thought, a trifle too bitterly), I told him to buck up and take it on the chin for the good of the household.  After all, I am allowing him to spend the night for a visit with good ol' Dad.   The kids these days!   

Hmmm, another thing to worry about.  The fire looks as if it might burn low within an hour.  I had better awaken Mrs. Warmheart so that she can come downstairs and toss another log or two on it.   What's that, dear?!   Hmmm, I'll have to consider where she recommends I place the log.   Perhaps the fireplace would work better. 

Sometimes when I sit here alone like this, I reflect upon the glories of yesterday.  I am not an old man, but I've done so much for so many people that it feels as if I have lived the lives of forty people!  In fact you might say that few men - or women - in the history of mankind have achieved my particular level of warm-heartedness.   

It is an achievement that parallels the likes of George Washington in the field of generalship, Babe Ruth in the field of baseball,  the Beatles in the field of pop music and William Shatner in the field of bad acting.   

While I take 95% of the credit for my success in the field of spreading warmth to the good citizens of the world, still, I am a modest man.   I must rise and ask for a round of applause for the man who gave me my start.  Tenderheart!  Are you still out there?  What's that?  No there is no problem.  I want you to stand and applaud a man  known as Joey da Icepick, known to me simply as Wiseheart.   Okay, back outside, Tenderheart.  I have a story to tell the dear readers.   

What a caring, sentimental man da Icepick was when I met him so long ago.   I was a poor, down-on-his luck ragamuffin living on the cold wet streets of Chicago.   But twenty years old, I had already seen the worst the world had to offer.   On this particularly wet and cold night, one of the wheels on my shopping cart had gone wobbly and was making a shrieking noise that caused people in the neighborhood to shout from their windows as I rolled it back and forth.  

But there was one voice that I had not heard before.   This voice was one of a man who, it seemed to me, must care deeply because he offered the most sage advice I have ever heard.  

"Hey, you little bastard", the voice rang out, "shut dat stinking cart up before I come down dere personally and shut it up myself".    

I stood there transfixed.  First of all, I wondered how he knew I was a bastard.   No one, not even my crazed mother, knew who my father was.  Second, I wondered how he knew that my cart carried a particularly foul odor.  Third, it hit me that he was giving me sage advice to fix the cart.  And finally, he was offering to come down and repair it for me.    

I decided it would be foolish not to take him up on his offer!   

"Come on down and fix it, then", I shouted up to him.  

His reply was immediate, and one that I shall remember until my dying day.

"You sonuvabitch.  I'm comin' down."

How could this man know what a bitch my mother was?!   I couldn't wait to meet him.   Within minutes, the door to his tenement opened and he came out.  He was not a tall man, but he was powerfully built, and he walked with a purposeful gait.  

I think the part I remember most of all about this first meeting was the strident and purposeful way in which he attempted to repair my cart.  Within seconds he had dumped my belongings out and, with his bare hands, had removed many pieces from it.  When he was finished, it certainly was a customized version of the old cart.  It would never roll again, but I was thankful just the same for him trying to help me.

"Whh..who are you?", I asked, shivering in the cold.

"You can call me Joey da Icepick", was his response and he was gone, back up into his tenement.

I stood there thinking for a while.  Joey da Icepick.   What an interesting name.  I wondered what nationality it was.   Seemed to me that if the word "da" was in the name, it was probably German.  I figure that his family name comes from a profession  back in Germany, where people have to pick their ways out of ice because it's extremely cold there.

After a few minutes of pondering this incredible meeting, I decided to find his room.  I knew he was on the second floor overlooking the street and so walked into the building and upstairs.

The hallway was dark and scary, but I knew I had to get to know more about this man.  I was in luck!  Through the darkness I could vaguely see a doorway that looked like it would lead to a room that faced the street.  I walked towards that door and just when 

 I got close enough to knock, I heard a loud metallic sound at my feet.  The next thing I knew, I was howling in pain.  

Joey came to the door and said 
"Jesus Christ, kid, what da hell's the matter with youse?".    The light coming through the doorway revealed to me that I had stepped smack dab into a bear trap.   

He sprung me from the trap and  brought me inside.   He had me sit down on the kitchen floor because, being a caring man, he didn't want blood to get on his couch.   I felt as if he had the wisdom of a doctor as he offered his prognosis.  

"You stupid ass, you stupid stupid ass.  Dis wound is pretty serious.  You're not gonna be able to walk for a week."   And he was absolutely correct.   I stayed with this wonderful fellow for a week, recovering from my wound.   

I spent a lot of time apologizing to him.  It turns out, and I didn't know this at the time, but it's pretty difficult to reset those traps.  Once someone steps in one, the blood and tissue gunks up the machinery.  

"Looks like you cost me a goddammed bear trap, you sonuvabitch", he told me after my repeated attempts at cleaning it out failed.   

It wasn't long before Joey and I got to talking like old friends.   I learned so much in that week that I felt my brain was going to explode.   

I owe so, so much to him.  When I told him how my mother used to lock me in a closet whenever I was bad, it was he who taught me how I should repay her.  "Ho hoooo!", he laughed, "da best way to take care of this sort of business is to first shackle her to a bed, see.  Den you let her know dat youse are gonna set her goddam house afire and she's gonna watch her possessions burn down while da bitch chokes to det."  

It was also he who helped me get off the streets.   Being wise to the ways of the world in ways I could never dream of, he taught me how those other homeless were really out to get me.  He said they were all probably packing heat in their shopping carts and that I should be wary of them all.  That the only way to deal with people like that was to get them before they got me.  What wonderful words of wisdom. 

"You and I are gonna become a team", he told me one morning.   "We're gonna start small and work our way up.  Seeings dat now youse are walking again, I want you to do me and yourself a huge favor.  You're  gonna go out under cover of the night and pilfer every goddam thing you can from dem bums out der.   I don't mean der stinking old blankets and clothes, I mean I tink dey got valuables hidden.  See, dis will pay for letting you sleep on my kitchen floor."

You should have seen the look of disappointment when I returned late that night, hobbling up to his house and avoiding his new bear trap.  The best I could muster up was padlock with no key and a roller skate.  

Wisely, Joey felt that it was time for me to learn a lesson.  It seems that when he sent me out on these missions, I was not to return until I had something worth bringing.  The lesson was painful and involved the re-opening of my ankle wound, but I felt that it taught me something valuable that I would keep forever.   If you're going to do a job, do it right.  

That night, after he uncuffed me and removed the gag, I told him that I thought he was the wisest man I had ever met.    I also asked him if I might call him "Wiseheart".   He regarded me for a minute and told me I was too warm hearted for his kind of work.   

"You can call me whatever you feel like ya stupid sonuvabitch, now get the hell outta here", he said as he slammed the door.  I carefully avoided the beartrap and made my way back outside.   

The world seemed like a warmer place and I felt the wiser for it.  As these thoughts went through my young mind, the sun rose.   It's beautiful rays wound their way through the tenements of the city.  Each finger of light spoke to me.  I could never claim to have the wisdom of the man I would now and forever call Wiseheart.   But what he told me rang true.  I was warm hearted.   And, if Mr. da Icepick was Wiseheart, why could I not be Warmheart?   I had found myself a new style, a new outlook on life and - perhaps best of all, dear reader - a new identity.

Although it turned out I did not have the talent or capability to live with Wiseheart, I had learned much about the world.   Enough to steal and rob my way off of the streets.  Enough to become one of the most loved, cherished and respected citizens in the entire world.

O, how I longed to find someone, a cherub faced youth who I could impart my knowledge to.   Not too many years later, I was married and my son Tenderheart, came along.  This was the young man I was to teach, to guide and to mold.   This was the young man to whom I taught the poem my mother forced me to recite in the dark, rat infested closets of my youth.

“No one likes a stormy heart that brings the world fear

No one likes a poor me heart that brings the world a sneer

No one likes a whore-mie heart that lures the world here

Everyone likes a warmy heart that brings the world cheer”

That, in it's most basic essence, is the story of Wiseheart.  Without him there would have been no Warmheart.  And without Warmheart, there would have been no Tenderheart. 

I still call old Wiseheart when I find myself in a situation I can not resolve.  I dread the day that he passes on up to the rich reward that awaits him.   But when it does, perhaps I'll take a look in the mirror and try to remember what that skinny dirty homeless bum that I once was looked like....before Wiseheart came into my life.

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