You Might Remember Me The Life and Times of Phil Hartman Read Online Free

You Might Remember Me The Life and Times of Phil Hartman
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to the baseball mishap: Paul was catching and Phil was batting. As he took his backswing, the bat struck Paul in the face, breaking his nose and knocking out teeth. The younger Hartmann went running home. When Rupert saw his bloodied boy, he was as concerned with Paul’s wounds as he was with the cost of mending them. “Any time you got hurt and it meant going to see a doctor, that cost money,” Paul says. “With eight kids, if everybody gets hurt once a month, that’s X amount of dollars. That doesn’t work out.” Hence the belt. Typically, though, Rupert was a sweet soul who, as John puts it, “never let us down. He always had a job. He always took care of business. He always was there.”
    Unlike Doris, who came from modestly educated blue-collar stock, Rupert was raised in a clan of spiritually and intellectually enlightened overachievers. His sister the sister, Mary Andrew (Eugenia), was a respected psychologist and nun who taught at Ottawa University and later the Sorbonne in Paris. “She was a brilliant woman who was very prominent in her order,” John says. Rupert’s priest brother, Edward, was the dean of men at Assumption University in Windsor, Ontario, and a Royal Canadian Air Force chaplain during World War II. Another sister, Clarice, taught high school. Their father John, Phil’s paternal grandfather, was a business entrepreneur who ran a popular tavern as well as the Alpine Hotel in Brantford. John Hartmann (grandpa’s namesake) claims that during World War II, when one’s German heritage was potentially problematic, their grandfather would perch outside his lodge, shotgun in hand, to keep potential marauders at bay. “He was a tough guy and a severe guy,” John says. “You look at photos of him and go, ‘Wow, this is a serious cat.’”
    The low-key and traditional Rupert, who walked the line between humorousness and seriousness, was decidedly more laid-back. While he was often introverted in public and around Doris, others recall his coming alive in private. He especially liked to spend time with his boys. When Phil and Paul were younger, he toted them along on various errands. And since Doris never drove, Rupert frequently played chauffeur, shuttling his progeny to doctor’s appointments, school, and wherever else they needed to go.
    What few in his family or circle of friends knew was this: Rupert was a drinker, sometimes a heavy one, but he kept his imbibing largely hidden from view. John recalls seeing his dad inebriated only once, when he was fifteen or sixteen, in Canada. “Come with me!” Doris told her eldest son, leading him to the back of their house. “Open the bathroom window.” So John pushed up the window and peered inside. There, passed out on the floor, was Rupert. “I freaked,” John says, “and I started to cry. And my mother said, ‘Oh, shut up! Just get in there and unlock the door!’” John did as he was told. Later on, Phil poked fun at Rupert’s drinking in a sketch that depicted Doris as the stern taskmistress standing over a blacked-out Rupert, who clutched an empty bottle in his hand. Doris and Rupert both laughed and thought it was funny.
    Years afterward, John came across a letter Doris had written in the 1980s telling Rupert in no uncertain terms that he was an alcoholic and she was tired of walking on eggshells around him. Now that their last child (Barbara Jane) had left home and Doris had fulfilled her duties as a mother, there was no reason they should continue living together. After Rupert promised he’d quit—by going cold turkey and without the benefit of drugs or Alcoholics Anonymous, John says—Doris gave him another chance. Rupert, John says, kept his word.
    When Phil was eight, in March 1957, after a formal visa presentation in Niagara Falls the previous November, half of the Hartmanns—Rupert, Nancy, baby Paul, and Mike the dog—finally left Canada. Their first stateside stop was Monmouth, Maine, where they’d spend the summer.
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