The Earliest Years

 

This is not a literary memoir, but instead a way for my son and wife and others to know more of me. I will stick to the facts and try to make it entertaining.

My first memory was when we lived above the store on 14^th and Fillmore streets. I recall looking through the chain-link fence at a dog. I don’t know if the dog was a stray or belonged to the store’s owner. I was maybe three years old. Is it interesting that a dog played the main role in my earliest recollection? My mother and father lived there, and their relationship was deteriorating. The neighbor became interested in my mother, since she was 22 years old, thin and maybe attractive; he was 37. Well, my parents broke up, my mother moved next door, and I now had a stepfather. He became one of the most important people in my life, accepting me, treating me well, and teaching me.

My next memories were from age four or five. I don’t have the chronology down exactly, so the next stories could be out of order.

The ants. I was playing of the sidewalk in from of the 14^th Street house when my stepfather moved us. Suddenly I was screaming because there were these ants crawling all over me, big red ants. Or maybe there were only two or three. But my mother heard me and came to my rescue.

The worms. We had a washing machine, the kind with a roller-type wringer on top. When my mother used it, she let the dirty water drain out into a shallow area. Soon one day I was playing in the dirt while she did the washing, and when the water drained out near me, a huge number of earthworms came tearing out of the ground. I screamed and my mother rescued me. Now, neither ants nor worms scare me, but I do remember my introductions.

The washing machine again. I had seen my mother use the wringer, so one day she went to visit the neighbor lady, Mrs. Glen, and I thought I’d try my hand (there’s a pun there—later) at wringing out something. Not being big enough to each the wringer, I found a box or something to stand on, and got something to feed into that mechanism. I managed to not only feed in the rag, but my finger, too. I screamed again and fell off the box. My finger, though, was caught tightly and I hung for several minutes while the rollers tore at my flesh. My mother eventually came to my rescue. There was definitely a visit to the doctor for that one, and my left index finder still has the scar.

More scientific investigation. I remember being in that yard one day and noticing a plane fly overhead. I had a stick in my hand and tried to use it to reach that plane. That turned out to be a failure, but I thought about it, and wondered if I could find a long enough stick someday with which I could succeed.

My brother. In this same house I remember when my mother was pregnant with Tom. I was maybe four, and I touched her stomach and realized kind of what was happening.

My first song. My mother listened to country-western of course, and a popular song at the time was “How much is that doggy in the window?” I recall asking my mother to write the station to play it for me. I don’t think we ever did. Alaska became a state, I seem to recall.

My fathers. One day my biological father came to this house, and an argument ensued between him and my stepfather. No idea what was going on between them, but it ended suddenly when my father’s head was shoved through the front door window. I think I recall the repair to the window.

I was not sent to kindergarten; maybe it was considered too modern, but Tom did go.

My stepfather drove a 30’s-era car with a rumble seat. The memory of riding back there is coolness.

I started first grade, but after a couple of days I had to stay home for a week. It was either because of the wringer incident or I got some childhood disease like the measles. I do remember lying in bed—since it was a one-bedroom cottage I slept in the living room—maybe only after Tom was born.

Then came a struggle between my mother and father, and I spent my first-grade year with my father’s parents. School that year was at St. Mary’s. The nun’s do, or at least did, hit us with rulers. I remember having to hand over my report card to someone, maybe my Aunt Birdie (Bernadette) who is only two years older than me and was in the same school. I cried. Not very auspicious with regard to my future academic achievements.

Two events about St. Mary’s still remain with me. One, while trying to eat the boiled cabbage in the cafeteria one lunchtime, I wound up vomiting. Bitter, soft stuff doesn’t appeal to kids.

The second event is more significant with respect to my eventual philosophical outlook. After flushing the toilet during a break, maybe recess or lunchtime, the toilet overflowed. I ran out of there and into the playground and tried to hide. The only hiding place I found was behind a tall palm tree (Phoenix, remember). I looked up beyond the fronds and had the sinking feeling that this was not working—God could always see me. I don’t know if I understood then the lesson I later gave myself about God and guilt, but such fear cannot be good for children. The boiled cabbage of spirituality.

My aunts, Birdie and Dorothy, were an important part of my life during that time. There was a telephone at my grandparents and one day we called random people and made jokes. We made mustard sandwiches. That house had a cellar and a sloping cellar door still invokes memories of that house. My grandfather and a big Nash (Hudson)—it looked like a big beetle and I thought it was cool.

My first Christmas I remember may have been before first grade, at a different house from that mentioned above that my grandparents had. It had a basement and us kids had to go down there when Santa Claus tinkled his bell and left presents upstairs. In high school my normal route took me by that house.

My grandparent also had another house near where I spent most of my childhood. But other than its cellar door I don’t remember actually being there.

My father and grandfather built a house during that first grade year. It was concrete block; they were bricklayers. One night Birdie and I were left home alone and by on a bed we could see the screen of a drive-in theater where “The Creature from the Black Lagoon” was playing. My father bought a maybe new 1955 Ford. I was given a spaceman helmet with a silvered faceplate. I could see out, but people could not see my face.

My grandparents must have moved a lot. I remember getting sick and having to stay home-maybe mumps this time? I got a toy toolbox, plastic and wood hammer, screwdriver and more.

Finally, this period of my life ended in the house of mustard sandwiches. I remember sitting on the piano bench crying, people around me were yelling and arguing, there were police. Someone came up to this confused six-year-old boy and asked if I wanted to live with my mother or my father. I must have said mother. I almost never saw my father again, and only rarely got to visit my grandparents and aunts.

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