Godfrey's Guide

this tale of a man with backbone and courage began:

ON THE LAST SUNDAY IN AUGUST OF 1930,...
WHILE THE MAN'S WIFE AND INFANT SON were attending morning Mass at Our Lady of Lourdes Roman Catholic Church, a man by the name of Quentin Viscus sat in his home in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, ate a Planter's peanut bar, downed oatmeal, sipped his coffee with sugar and cream, got up and went into the living room, destroyed all the family pictures in which he appeared, strolled out to the garage in his robe and pajamas and slippers, grabbed his rifle, and blew his brains out. 

  Quentin had been a candy bar salesman.  His business had crashed along with the Stock Market in 1929.  When Mary Viscus realized what her husband had done and that he was not coming back, she took a job as a customer service manager at Freitag's Delicatessen during the day and a change clerk in the Lorimer Street station of the BMT at night, while her  son Quincy was in the care of Mary's mother, Myra.  Myra had once been a vaudeville dancer who was forced to retire when she broke her leg on the stage of the Halsey Theater.  Myra had been married to a man named Bart, who was also a vaudeville performer at the Halsey, famous for saying funny things, getting laughs, and being shot to death by a fellow performer in a pool room brawl on Herkimer Street in 1924. 

  And for some odd reason, at some point around 1937 when he was 8 years-old, little Quincy decided that he wanted to be in show business, too.  "The problem with that was this: the older I got, the uglier I became," he told me.  "By the time I was in 2nd grade, the girls started calling me the 'Moose' and 'Horse Face.'  The moniker 'Moose' has pretty much stuck ever since."  That aside, when he graduated from P.S. 74, he talked himself into the school play, as the lead in The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo, won rave reviews, and realized that ugly wasn't all that bad; then went on to Adams High School, where he starred as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.  Standing at 4 inches over six-feet tall, he was great at being terrible and disgusting.  Quincy had finally arrived at something he loved to do and figured that he had the looks to do it.  He smiled at me, and said, "The good thing about being born ugly is that you never lose your looks.  If you're born a pretty-boy, just like clockwork, the looks are bound to eventually go kerplop...and then what do you have?" 

  It was in July 1946, that his Grandmother Myra died of a heart attack and his Mother passed away in September of the same year from a brain tumor.  By 1947, two years after World War Two had come to an end, Quincy was 18, on his own, had officially changed his first name to Moose, and was moving around, playing monsters at a neighborhood theater in Philadelphia, a small theater in Cranberry Lake, and for a few weeks in Singac, New Jersey, and by day made extra money hustling pool.  "The next thing I know," he said, "I'm out in Hollywood doing stand-in work in the movie Abbot and Costello Meet Frankstein and Amazing Mr. X, after meeting an agent in Newark, who told me that he loved the way I looked.  Next thing I know, my agent is propositioning me and took a grab at my crotch.  I smack him in the face, break his nose, and land in the L.A. County Jail and am sent to the prison farm.  This was in September of '48, the same week the actor Robert Mitchum was out for a night on the town, arrested for smoking pot in the Laurel Canyon area of L.A., tossed into jail, and we mopped floors together.  I was 19.  He was 31.  He liked me.  I liked him.  He loved the fact that I'd changed my name from Quincy to Moose, so he took me under his wing and made me promise to keep in touch after we were released." 

  Even with an Oscar Nomination, Mitchum was afraid that his career was over.  He was wrong.  He was bigger box-office than ever.  He kept his eye on Moose, got Moose stand-in parts in The Red Pony and The Big Steal, as well as The Racket and Macao.  By 1952, Moose felt guilty for not having enlisted in the Army.  The Korean War had begun in June of 1950, and he had evaded the draft for over 2 years, so at the age of 23, he found himself  in Korea, where battles with names like Old Baldy  and Bloody Ridge were fought.  It was in a battle named Pork Chop Hill when Moose stepped on a land-mine and got both legs blown-off, spent the next 2 years at The Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, D.C. recovering, and had to figure out what he was going to do for the rest of his life.  "I knew I wasn't the most romantic looking son of a bitch in the first place, and now I had no legs.  Right-off-the-bat, I swore I would never do what my Daddy had done, I didn't want to become one of the worst drinkers in the history of show business, I never really expected anything from Hollywood.  I just didn't know what in the hell I was going to do next, so I got myself a couple of prosthetic legs and learned to walk on crutches."  He gave a small smile, and added: "I even gave some thought to changing my name from Moose  to Stumpy." 

  He was finally released from Walter Reed in April of 1957 at the age of 28, and decided that he wanted to go see the world-famous Las Vegas Strip, began playing poker at casinos like The Thunderbird and Club Bingo, as well as the famous Flamingo, all of which offered him free drinks, comped rooms and fine meals, because he was not only a Veteran, but a double amputee.  During this period, Moose met a young dancer named Libby Greenwood, who was 10 years younger than he was, she took a liking to him, and they began to see one another on a regular basis.  But most of the time, he was at the blackjack and poker tables.  Sometimes he went to see the shows along the strip, his favorites were Charo, the wife of band leader Xavier Cugat, mostly due to the fact that she was sexy, and Don Rickles, because Moose thought Rickles was almost as ugly as he was. He hadn't even begun to guess what might lay ahead, what he might or might not do next.  "It wasn't like employers were standing in line and eager to hire unsightly amputees,"he said.

  But Moose remembers the time fondly.  It was then that he thought he might be able to make a living as a gambler.  He also bought a wedding and engagement ring for Libby, just in case he might summon the courage to eventually ask her to marry him.  By 1960, he was moving around, playing at almost every blackjack table in Vegas, and making a good living.  Libby and Moose married in June of 1961.  She expected something like a conventional home life; she was a good Catholic, gave him a daughter who they named Maria on September 1st in 1962, but never got the home life she desired and divorced Moose in 1964.  "I was devastated," Moose remembers.  "I felt like a flop and called myself all sorts of names."  The real trouble was that Moose did not know what to do about it.  He begged Libby to come back to him.  She eventually did.  They remarried in August of 1965.

  Moose is sitting in a wheelchair out in the backyard of his home in Sacramento and smoking a cigar, while he continues to tell me his story.  I ask him what came next.  He smiles, staring at the smoke from his cigar, gives another small smile.  "I'd made a hefty amount of money gambling and  Libby thought I ought to get an education, since I was now a father, so I went to the University of Nevada, got myself a Bachelor of Arts Degree, liked studying more than I ever thought I would, and earned myself a Law Degree.  More than anyone else, my wife gave me courage and advice.  So at the age of 43, I became a lawyer for the disabled, moved out here to Sacramento, raised a daughter who became a doctor.  There were things I always wanted to do and didn't," Moose says.  "But the best thing that ever happened to me was that I was lucky enough to have my wife and kid."

  For years, he had thought about his Father.  So in 2009, at the age of 80, he decided that he would take a trip back to Brooklyn, made his way to the Riverside Chapel on Flatbush Avenue, crossed the lumpy grass in his wheelchair, looked down at his Father's headstone, and said:  "You don't know what you have missed on, Dad, doing what you did to yourself.  The real trouble with a guy like you is that you lacked courage, and I'm sorry that you never gave me the chance to know you.  I think we might have had some good times together."  He stared at the smoke from the cigar, "I just thought he ought to know that..."  He looked at me, and added: "All in all, I've been very lucky guy..."

it was then that Libby walked out the back door and gave him a wink and hug and a kiss.