It was the summer of 1968. I was done with teaching for now and out looking for a job. I found one almost immediately at the university in the Psych. Department. They had a federal grant to study Head Start programs around the state to see if pre schools were an effective use of government funds. I was impressed. I did not realize that our government exercised such detailed oversight. I thought they just saw a problem, threw some money at it, and let the chips fall where they may, until they took the money away and threw it at some new problem. But, anyway, not the case with Head Start. Apparently twelve different universities scattered around the nation where conducting a variety of studies. All of the projects were set up to test all Head Start students at randomly selected centers both pre-program and post program.
I worked from a little office, on the other side of the same park where I lived, with some very interesting characters. Our secretary, Jackie Jarvis, was from Jamaica. She could speak the “patois” of the island. She was exotic and, at times, raunchy. Our boss was blond, Scandinavian, gorgeous, and from a wealthy family. I was a tester and a coder. Reenie, the other tester was a thin blonde dying to be in love with our Jonnie. The three of us would be scheduled out of the office traveling several days per week and in the office coding the days when we weren’t traveling. Most of our traveling was done as day trips. At one center we did have to stay in a hotel for a week at a time. This was a busy job and a great job. Of course, four-year-olds are not very verbal, so IQ questions were pretty basic. Introduce subject to cow, show picture, say - “This is a cow.” Show next page with cow mixed in with other animals. Ask, “Can you find the cow?” Head Start children were often even less verbal than a typical four-year-old as Head Start looked for children who were “disadvantaged” in some way (often in several ways). Some of our urban kids had never before seen or heard of a cow. The rural kids had. It made a difference, but even so you could see that the tests revealed information about cognitive content and process. Other tests asked basic questions – What is your first name? – What is your last name? – Point to red. – Point to the circle. – Who is your best friend in school? Every child in our sample schools was tested.
Jon, Jackie, Reenie, and I loved our jobs. We felt the task was relevant and the job was not difficult. We were all so light-hearted together, laughed so much and smoked so many cigarettes. You could smoke cigarettes almost anywhere in those days, except in the Head Start centers. You could smoke in offices, in restaurants, in cars, in homes, at outdoor rock concerts, in hotels, in airplanes. Reenie and I smoked up a storm riding to the various centers while she pined over Jon, who, if we were to believe Jackie, was not interested in women. Reenie refused to believe it. So we would smoke and Reenie would yearn as we criss-crossed the state testing four-year-olds. We also had to have a year-long study. We chose the area of “positive” and “negative reinforcement” or “praise” and “blame”. We would quantify the amount and type of “praise” or “blame” given to each subject on a grid, code our findings in FORTRAN and forward them to the federal government.
Every Friday we would rest in the office and Jackie and Jonnie would start. It always began the same way. “Jonnie, my left tit itches,” Jackie would say, in her lilting island way. And they would be off, on a perfectly safe but exceedingly hot sexual riff while Reenie and I listened, at first shocked silly, eventually used to it, happily entertained.
Although I was busy during the week I was still available to go barhopping with Annie on weekends. Sometimes Reenie came along. Luke still showed up from time to time with some pot that we were all happy to smoke. We’d get the album cover and the papers and the rolling lessons would begin. Rolling a good joint took time and concentration especially if it wasn’t the first one of the evening, if the music, maybe a Beatles album, was sucking you in and out like a tide and everyone was mellow and hungry. Small, tight, and uniform were the qualities you were judged on. As the “j” passed from person to person, as breaths were held all around the circle, the “j” could not fall apart enroute and had to last down to the hot rolled paper at the end when only a roach clip would safely hold it. Sometimes there was hashish in a small pipe or a hookah or a bong. People dropped by, time flew away like bubbles- oh, look at that – pop – gone – where’d it go, next bubble – oh-h-h.
We started out conservatively, me in my little teacher clothes, the stockbrokers in their office clothes. Annie and I continued making the rounds of the bars, admittedly sometimes setting off slightly stoned. But my new job did not require formal attire and we were living near a big university. Everyone was getting “hippified”, groovin’, with long swingy hair on boys and girls, afros everywhere, dreads. Gradually we put aside our mini dresses and our skirts and blouses. We shopped at the army-navy stores – painter jeans (both the cream and the blue), and work boots – at the import store – embroidered tops from Mexico and India. We wore beaded or macramé bracelets and sometimes headbands. Annie left her job working with the stockbroker. She took a job in retail. She was not so into the pot scene but liked being stylish so she looked the hippie part.
Summer was the best time to be a hippie because what was happening was a group phenomenon and people liked to parade around the university area with other “freaks”, or sit on a sunny hill, across from the main university business district, with very little grass, dubbed “the beach”. We attended outdoor concerts all that summer where joints were passed through the crowd. “Give peace a chance.” It was a huge love fest. We felt that we were all one consciousness, one mind, and one heart. Since the communication was mostly nonverbal except for whatever music we were listening to, and a few polite “man, want a hits” accompanied by an arm tapping yours with a joint held out for you, it was easy to be in sync. We all did our weekly work, but it wasn’t what our life was about. “We can change the world, rearrange the world.”
Lena came by our place with a kilo of grass. That was a lot of grass. Grass usually came in nickel or dime bags, which after you picked out all the twigs and seeds, had to be used sparingly. We knew grass was illegal so we did hide it. We also knew how to act straight even though we were stoned “out of our gourds.” But it didn’t feel all that illegal. Everyone smoked right out in the open. In the neighborhoods where we lived people smoked pot in cars, even at indoor concerts. Rarely was anyone arrested unless they were belligerent or rowdy. We called the cops “pigs,” but they usually showed remarkable restraint where we were concerned. I only realized how different the rest of the world was when I went home to Smithvale on Sundays. At first it was easy to blend my two world, but as I became more of a “stoner” it was much more bizarre to go home.
So Lena brought the kilo to our apartment and we all helped clean and weigh and package it. With her New York City connections she had decided to go into business. We got so high just breathing and handling the marijuana, not smoking it, just taking it in through our pores, a magnificent “contact high,” that we gave no thought at all to the legality, morality or anything but the pleasure of the music pounding around us, and the conversation, however repetitive and evanescent, and the high.
Sometimes there were parties with outsiders. Linda knew a lot of people. Annie always had some cutie hovering around. But I liked it best when it was just “family,” especially with Linda trying to steal all Annie’s men. I found I did not like conflict. I was a peacemaker. I wanted life to flow along happily from day to day without personal stress. Where there are people, there is always conflict, which even I, with all my talent and energy, could not defuse.
By the summer of 1969 we were many tokes away from the summer of 1968. Life was very, very good. Even news from the world outside reached us only intermittently. The fact that campus strikes could and did become violent registered. Black Power registered. The assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King made a huge impression. But our revolution was non violent. It was all peace and love. We were aglow with the wonder of “grass”roots, evolutionary change, at least some of us were. When Bobbie Kennedy was assassinated sadness and fear rocked paradise, but paradise steadied again and “Reefer Madness” ruled the day. “Don’t bogart that joint.”
Friday, August 27, 2010
Friday, August 20, 2010
Chapter 14 - Hobort
Hobart looked like James Dean in the pictures we had of him as a young man. Family lore has it that he marched to his own drummer. He didn’t like drinking, smoking, swearing, or womanizing. He was not religious, just had very high moral standards for himself and for everyone around him. He was actually a loner, who always longed to be by himself. His dream life was to be a hermit in a shack full of books. He loved to fish, and had obviously spent time hunting, although he never was really fond of hunting. He loved mechanical things; especially cars, and he always had a car, starting with a Model A. He also owned a few trucks over the years. As far as I know he never owned a new car in his life and the best car he ever drove was a luxury rental that he drove once. On that particular occasion it was the only model available when he and mom were driving home from Florida. He was into late middle age by then.
Although Hobart wanted to be alone, he rarely was. He was actually quite popular and had a close circle of friends and relatives that he apparently drove to picnics, parties, beaches, and various other low cost events. My mom hung out with Hobart and his crew for six years before they married.
Hobart had to drop out of school in the eighth grade. His parents were not able to find work. It was the depression. His first job involved making deliveries on roller skates, a messenger service. In his late twenties he opened a garage and gas station with one of his good friends. The garage was forced out of business when his partner absconded with the funds. There was a great deal of bitterness about this and their friendship never recovered. After that, Hobart, not married, went to work in factories. When World War II broke out he was not accepted in the armed forces for several reasons, one of which involved being the sole support of his parents and later because he was in an “essential war industry” which he never described to us. I cannot imagine my father as a soldier. He was a solitary man in his heart and soul, with none of that locker room camaraderie which seems to help men survive in such environments. I suppose no one can really picture her or his father jumping out of a foxhole with a blazing gun or riding on a tank or marching in mud, or running off a U-boat into a brutal rain of machine gun fire. The fact that he did not participate in the war as a soldier cut him off further from his peers. No Veterans of Foreign Wars for Dad, no old war buddies stopping by the house. The neighborhood men in Smithvale who were his peers had all fought in the war. He was suspect to them and he lost an “in” in the good old boy network that might have helped him have greater career success. He never acted as if this bothered him at all.
When he was not working he could be found outside doing something “around the house”. There was always yard work to do and repairs to the house, and cars to keep on the road. The cellar was his domain also. His workshop was on the opposite side of the cellar from the washing machine and was well equipped with hammers, screwdrivers, drills and saws; jars of nuts and bolts, tacks and nails, all organized along a shelf behind the workbench. Little boxes with tiny drawers held every small piece of hardware that might ever be of use. There were various motors and car parts scattered over the workbench waiting to be rebuilt or to be plugged in to the latest used car. Later there were shoeboxes full of vacuum tubes to repair TV’s and radios for extra cash.
Hobart was the kind of dad who made you feel that he would take care of his family, no matter what it took. He was also a judgmental dad who led by example. He ruled by disapproval and disappointment. He disapproved of drinking, smoking, lying, tattling, gossiping whining, and refusing to pull your weight. He had honed disappointment to a fine weapon. The worst thing any of his children or even his wife could do was to not live up to his high expectation. We all hated to disappoint Dad because his disapproval was expressed in silence, a silence that had a weight. He would seem crushed by the weakness of your character and you would have to atone for your behavior before the weight of his silence would lift.
It was a traditional household in many ways. There were girls’ chores and boy’s chores. Boys’ chores involved taking out the garbage and doing yard work with Dad. Girls’ chores included ironing, setting the table, picking up, watching younger siblings, and most dreaded of all, doing the dishes. We girls felt, to begin with, that the division of chores was unfair and of course they were, but this argument held no sway. We assigned ourselves turns at table setting and dish washing and drying. Although we had six girls for many years only three of us were old enough to do the dishes, Felicity, Gertie, and me. Our family made a mountain of dishes. Every evening after dinner there were dishes all over the kitchen Often we would get right to it, but there were always nights when we procrastinated, got interested in a program on TV, started reading a book, started a board game. If we waited just a little too long, Dad would snap. Then he would go out in the kitchen and do the dishes, his lips in a tight line. Then you were not allowed to jump in and help. You were banished from the kitchen and you slunk away to sulk in some corner of the house. Your banishment from parental favor would continue until the next day when you would usually, of your own free will, pitch in and complete some self-assigned chore to get back in Dad’s good graces. Even Mom would occasionally earn the silent treatment.
If Mom was the heart of our family, Dad was its conscience. He did not believe in holding others to a standard to which one did not hold one’s self. He also believed “actions speak louder than words.’ Although when we were young he sometimes had a “cocktail” or a “high ball”, by the time we were teenagers he did not drink at all and made it clear that he was disappointed if we did. Maybe he lucked out and missed out on that alcohol addiction gene which the rest of his family seemed to have inherited in spades, but it was clear that he exercised self-discipline. I never heard my father swear. Hobart’s worst curse was “Jesus H. Christ”, which made me nervous for his “immortal soul”. I learned about our “immortal soul” on the school bus. Every day I sat with a good Catholic girl, Mary Margaret. Mary Margaret helped me lament the fact that I wasn’t born Catholic. She told me that even if I converted, the best I could hope for was purgatory. I didn’t really buy into this as it seemed way less advantageous than my own religion in which going straight to heaven was a distinct possibility, but I did get attached to the idea of an “immortal soul.” Hobart never picked up a cigarette while he was my father, and he never mentioned whether he tried one as a young man. Dad’s father used to visit us on Sunday’s when we still lived in the city. He was a short, rotund Frenchman who wore a dark suit and tie and smoked big smelly cigars. He died when I was five. No one blamed his death on the cigars.
I don’t think my brother’s drinking or my smoking was a rebellious act against an inflexible parent. Although we did these things, it was always with the awareness of Hobart’s deep disappointment. His disappointment became ours, because, even though we did these things, we lost respect for ourselves as we did them. Just to drink or smoke proved that we were lacking in self-discipline.
Hobart had trouble dealing with a houseful of teen-aged daughters. He was extremely modest. We never saw either of our parents unclothed except in bathing suits or, rarely, pajamas. He not only had a houseful of teenage girls, but also, usually a houseful of teenage boys who were not family. He was adamant that we not appear downstairs until we were fully clothed. Gertie was the only daughter who did not take to modesty. She was the girl in the family who learned to change her entire outfit in the car, without showing anything at all. She was the sister who taught us how to remove our bra without taking off our shirt or blouse. She wouldn’t have minded changing in the middle of the living room. She taught herself the clandestine undressing techniques out of respect for Dad.
When Dad was in a light-hearted mood, he could be quite cheerful and fun. Sometimes when we did the dishes without argument or delay he would join us and treat us to a display of terrible yodeling until we were begging him to leave the kitchen. Or he would treat us to a chorus of “I have tears in my ears from lying on my back in my bed while I cried over you.” In a good mood he would give us lessons in how to turn a light switch on and off with a dishtowel. Most of us can probably still perform this amazing feat. We spent a lot of time trying to keep Dad cheerful, but we were young and selfish and many an evening went by without a yodel.
Hobart was also our hero, sometimes a very awkward one, but he hated to see his children hurt or unhappy. Once we stopped to get ice cream cones at an ice cream stand on the main road through Smithvale. I got to ride “shotgun”, a privilege I never usually won. I leaned against my door as we pulled out onto the highway and fell right out on the road. My father’s reflexes were so swift, that he stopped the car, jumped out and stopped traffic before I even started crying. After he comforted me, with his adrenalin levels probably through the roof, he took me back around and got me another ice cream, this time making sure my door was locked.
When I was living in the apartment by the park I had a very bad day, a day when I could not stop crying – probably PMS, although we did not have that term. Hobart appeared at my door, probably sent by Augusta. It was clear that he had no idea what to do but he had aspirin for me to take, and a few food delicacies that he picked up at the market. He made me take the aspirin right away and then give him a tour of the apartment. I was very touched by his gauche thoughtfulness and he did chase my blues away.
Luke said that I overlooked my father’s flaws. He said that, for one thing, we didn’t have to be so poor. He said that my dad could have been a foreman at the shop, but he could not force himself to go against his nature or his own wishes, even for the sake of his family’s finances. I remember that this had been a tough decision for my father. He took his position as a union steward very seriously and felt by becoming a management employee he would be betraying his fellow union members. I’m not sure how Luke got his information; probably he had talked about it with Robert. Anyway, Luke insisted that Hobart should have made this sacrifice for his family. It was certainly an interesting new take on my father, but I really didn’t agree. My father’s strict personal values were important to me.
I could, of course, go on and on about Hobart, who couldn’t write a whole book about their father, but I’m almost done for now. Hobart’s one other outstanding trait was his very fine brain. He was smart. He understood electronics intuitively and could have been an engineer if born into other circumstances. The house in Smithvale had antique wiring. Anytime we wanted to add a modern appliance Hobart had to go down into the cellar and perform some electrical magic. Eventually he reached the limits of the current wiring arrangement. When the wringer washer gave way to an electric washer and dryer and a new electric range was added to the kitchen, a 220 circuit had to be added. Hobart drew his plans, bought his supplies, and rewired the house adding a brand new electrical box. It had to be inspected by some official agency after it was installed. They tried to give Hobart a hard time but it was correctly done and they ultimately had to approve it. He took a home course in calculus, when he needed it to qualify for a job off the main line at work, and he passed it easily. He spent many a night with all of us around the dining room table before he worked nights, helping us with our homework. He made it clear to all of us that education had a high priority in his view. Every one in or family finished high school and five of us completed at least two years of higher education. Robert and his friends christened him with the nickname “Brain.”
Although Hobart wanted to be alone, he rarely was. He was actually quite popular and had a close circle of friends and relatives that he apparently drove to picnics, parties, beaches, and various other low cost events. My mom hung out with Hobart and his crew for six years before they married.
Hobart had to drop out of school in the eighth grade. His parents were not able to find work. It was the depression. His first job involved making deliveries on roller skates, a messenger service. In his late twenties he opened a garage and gas station with one of his good friends. The garage was forced out of business when his partner absconded with the funds. There was a great deal of bitterness about this and their friendship never recovered. After that, Hobart, not married, went to work in factories. When World War II broke out he was not accepted in the armed forces for several reasons, one of which involved being the sole support of his parents and later because he was in an “essential war industry” which he never described to us. I cannot imagine my father as a soldier. He was a solitary man in his heart and soul, with none of that locker room camaraderie which seems to help men survive in such environments. I suppose no one can really picture her or his father jumping out of a foxhole with a blazing gun or riding on a tank or marching in mud, or running off a U-boat into a brutal rain of machine gun fire. The fact that he did not participate in the war as a soldier cut him off further from his peers. No Veterans of Foreign Wars for Dad, no old war buddies stopping by the house. The neighborhood men in Smithvale who were his peers had all fought in the war. He was suspect to them and he lost an “in” in the good old boy network that might have helped him have greater career success. He never acted as if this bothered him at all.
When he was not working he could be found outside doing something “around the house”. There was always yard work to do and repairs to the house, and cars to keep on the road. The cellar was his domain also. His workshop was on the opposite side of the cellar from the washing machine and was well equipped with hammers, screwdrivers, drills and saws; jars of nuts and bolts, tacks and nails, all organized along a shelf behind the workbench. Little boxes with tiny drawers held every small piece of hardware that might ever be of use. There were various motors and car parts scattered over the workbench waiting to be rebuilt or to be plugged in to the latest used car. Later there were shoeboxes full of vacuum tubes to repair TV’s and radios for extra cash.
Hobart was the kind of dad who made you feel that he would take care of his family, no matter what it took. He was also a judgmental dad who led by example. He ruled by disapproval and disappointment. He disapproved of drinking, smoking, lying, tattling, gossiping whining, and refusing to pull your weight. He had honed disappointment to a fine weapon. The worst thing any of his children or even his wife could do was to not live up to his high expectation. We all hated to disappoint Dad because his disapproval was expressed in silence, a silence that had a weight. He would seem crushed by the weakness of your character and you would have to atone for your behavior before the weight of his silence would lift.
It was a traditional household in many ways. There were girls’ chores and boy’s chores. Boys’ chores involved taking out the garbage and doing yard work with Dad. Girls’ chores included ironing, setting the table, picking up, watching younger siblings, and most dreaded of all, doing the dishes. We girls felt, to begin with, that the division of chores was unfair and of course they were, but this argument held no sway. We assigned ourselves turns at table setting and dish washing and drying. Although we had six girls for many years only three of us were old enough to do the dishes, Felicity, Gertie, and me. Our family made a mountain of dishes. Every evening after dinner there were dishes all over the kitchen Often we would get right to it, but there were always nights when we procrastinated, got interested in a program on TV, started reading a book, started a board game. If we waited just a little too long, Dad would snap. Then he would go out in the kitchen and do the dishes, his lips in a tight line. Then you were not allowed to jump in and help. You were banished from the kitchen and you slunk away to sulk in some corner of the house. Your banishment from parental favor would continue until the next day when you would usually, of your own free will, pitch in and complete some self-assigned chore to get back in Dad’s good graces. Even Mom would occasionally earn the silent treatment.
If Mom was the heart of our family, Dad was its conscience. He did not believe in holding others to a standard to which one did not hold one’s self. He also believed “actions speak louder than words.’ Although when we were young he sometimes had a “cocktail” or a “high ball”, by the time we were teenagers he did not drink at all and made it clear that he was disappointed if we did. Maybe he lucked out and missed out on that alcohol addiction gene which the rest of his family seemed to have inherited in spades, but it was clear that he exercised self-discipline. I never heard my father swear. Hobart’s worst curse was “Jesus H. Christ”, which made me nervous for his “immortal soul”. I learned about our “immortal soul” on the school bus. Every day I sat with a good Catholic girl, Mary Margaret. Mary Margaret helped me lament the fact that I wasn’t born Catholic. She told me that even if I converted, the best I could hope for was purgatory. I didn’t really buy into this as it seemed way less advantageous than my own religion in which going straight to heaven was a distinct possibility, but I did get attached to the idea of an “immortal soul.” Hobart never picked up a cigarette while he was my father, and he never mentioned whether he tried one as a young man. Dad’s father used to visit us on Sunday’s when we still lived in the city. He was a short, rotund Frenchman who wore a dark suit and tie and smoked big smelly cigars. He died when I was five. No one blamed his death on the cigars.
I don’t think my brother’s drinking or my smoking was a rebellious act against an inflexible parent. Although we did these things, it was always with the awareness of Hobart’s deep disappointment. His disappointment became ours, because, even though we did these things, we lost respect for ourselves as we did them. Just to drink or smoke proved that we were lacking in self-discipline.
Hobart had trouble dealing with a houseful of teen-aged daughters. He was extremely modest. We never saw either of our parents unclothed except in bathing suits or, rarely, pajamas. He not only had a houseful of teenage girls, but also, usually a houseful of teenage boys who were not family. He was adamant that we not appear downstairs until we were fully clothed. Gertie was the only daughter who did not take to modesty. She was the girl in the family who learned to change her entire outfit in the car, without showing anything at all. She was the sister who taught us how to remove our bra without taking off our shirt or blouse. She wouldn’t have minded changing in the middle of the living room. She taught herself the clandestine undressing techniques out of respect for Dad.
When Dad was in a light-hearted mood, he could be quite cheerful and fun. Sometimes when we did the dishes without argument or delay he would join us and treat us to a display of terrible yodeling until we were begging him to leave the kitchen. Or he would treat us to a chorus of “I have tears in my ears from lying on my back in my bed while I cried over you.” In a good mood he would give us lessons in how to turn a light switch on and off with a dishtowel. Most of us can probably still perform this amazing feat. We spent a lot of time trying to keep Dad cheerful, but we were young and selfish and many an evening went by without a yodel.
Hobart was also our hero, sometimes a very awkward one, but he hated to see his children hurt or unhappy. Once we stopped to get ice cream cones at an ice cream stand on the main road through Smithvale. I got to ride “shotgun”, a privilege I never usually won. I leaned against my door as we pulled out onto the highway and fell right out on the road. My father’s reflexes were so swift, that he stopped the car, jumped out and stopped traffic before I even started crying. After he comforted me, with his adrenalin levels probably through the roof, he took me back around and got me another ice cream, this time making sure my door was locked.
When I was living in the apartment by the park I had a very bad day, a day when I could not stop crying – probably PMS, although we did not have that term. Hobart appeared at my door, probably sent by Augusta. It was clear that he had no idea what to do but he had aspirin for me to take, and a few food delicacies that he picked up at the market. He made me take the aspirin right away and then give him a tour of the apartment. I was very touched by his gauche thoughtfulness and he did chase my blues away.
Luke said that I overlooked my father’s flaws. He said that, for one thing, we didn’t have to be so poor. He said that my dad could have been a foreman at the shop, but he could not force himself to go against his nature or his own wishes, even for the sake of his family’s finances. I remember that this had been a tough decision for my father. He took his position as a union steward very seriously and felt by becoming a management employee he would be betraying his fellow union members. I’m not sure how Luke got his information; probably he had talked about it with Robert. Anyway, Luke insisted that Hobart should have made this sacrifice for his family. It was certainly an interesting new take on my father, but I really didn’t agree. My father’s strict personal values were important to me.
I could, of course, go on and on about Hobart, who couldn’t write a whole book about their father, but I’m almost done for now. Hobart’s one other outstanding trait was his very fine brain. He was smart. He understood electronics intuitively and could have been an engineer if born into other circumstances. The house in Smithvale had antique wiring. Anytime we wanted to add a modern appliance Hobart had to go down into the cellar and perform some electrical magic. Eventually he reached the limits of the current wiring arrangement. When the wringer washer gave way to an electric washer and dryer and a new electric range was added to the kitchen, a 220 circuit had to be added. Hobart drew his plans, bought his supplies, and rewired the house adding a brand new electrical box. It had to be inspected by some official agency after it was installed. They tried to give Hobart a hard time but it was correctly done and they ultimately had to approve it. He took a home course in calculus, when he needed it to qualify for a job off the main line at work, and he passed it easily. He spent many a night with all of us around the dining room table before he worked nights, helping us with our homework. He made it clear to all of us that education had a high priority in his view. Every one in or family finished high school and five of us completed at least two years of higher education. Robert and his friends christened him with the nickname “Brain.”
Friday, August 13, 2010
Chapter 13 -- The Apartment By the Park
I moved in with my new roommates just before school started, the only great decision I made. If I was still trying to deal with Lena’s nonsense, along with getting through that first disheartening year of teaching, I probably would have been certifiable.
Linda had the front bedroom, which was obviously built to be the master. It was the largest of the three bedrooms and she furnished it with some style from second hand furniture stores. Linda was from an eastern suburb (Smithvale was north of the city) known for its affluence and good schools. Her family, however, was not well off. They were a big Irish family with seven children and she was the oldest. She had long hair and a thin angular face and a little boy’s body, straight up and down, but she still managed to look confident, stylish, and arrogantly intelligent. She had heavy Modigliani style upper eyelids, which were her best feature. She was brisk and practical and wittily waspish, hard to warm up to. She had to wear thick-lensed glasses much of the time. She had an architect boyfriend who had the upstairs flat in the house next door. Most of these houses had been built within the same era and were almost identical except for the exterior color and landscaping.
The architect’s name was Peter. He was older than we were, in his thirties. He had long hair, which was just becoming the style at the time, and a stocky, very slightly overweight body. He was always brushing his hair off his face, but he had very kind eyes, and although he had the same dry wit as Linda he also had an air of languid ennui that seemed very mature. He was usually fatherly and friendly and stayed out of our roommate squabbles. He loved jazz, had a very expensive sound system. He used a bed for a sofa and covered it with a genuine cowhide throw and with many huge pillows. He loved to prop you comfortably among the pillows with some excellent headphones and select some John McLaughlin or Miles Davis for you to listen to. He was never called Pete. Some people are nickname people, some aren’t. Peter wasn’t.
I had the middle bedroom, which, like the first bedroom had two huge windows that started about 12” off the floor and went almost all the way to the ceiling. The windows were in the center of a wall with about 6” between them. On the opposite wall was a built-in dresser with bookcases built in on either side, all painted white. There were hardwood floors and the woodwork was stained dark. It was the most beautiful room I had ever possessed.
Annie had the third room, in the back, off the kitchen. Annie grew up in the back of beyond, way out past the northern suburbs, in farm country, although her parents were not farmers. Her grandparents were farmers, but her dad sold real estate and also bought real estate, which he subsequently sold or rented. Annie had ten kids in her family, of which she was the oldest. She was a natural beauty with high cheekbones and long, shiny, straight brown hair, and although she was short, she was perfectly proportioned. Linda liked to imply that Annie had no brains whatsoever, and since Annie had never had much opportunity to value her intelligence, she was an easy target. “ She’s inane,” Linda said. Linda sometimes referred to Annie as “Innie”, which,of course, made Annie very angry. Linda and Annie certainly needed a buffer. Although they worked for the same stockbroker, they had nothing else in common and did not get along very well. As Annie usually got the worst in any encounter, she avoided Linda’s company as much as possible, which was fairly easy given that Linda was usually with Peter.
In spite of the subtle hostility between these two I was happy with this new arrangement almost as soon as I moved in. Annie and I got along very well, and Linda, who should have gone to college, respected my degree and my job enough to prevent me from being a target for her sharp tongue.
Annie was a social girl; she still had a number of friends from high school who occasionally came into the city to go out to the bars with her. Annie wanted a husband, and not one from the sticks. She wanted a handsome husband from a good family. She combed the bars every weekend, especially the college bars hoping to meet one.
I was so busy with my first year of school, that at first, I was content to stay at home in the quiet flat to work on lesson plans and mark papers. Luke came to see me a few times, when he could catch a ride, but I was distracted, considering all the problems I was having in the classroom.
Eventually Annie lured me out of the house with her a few Friday and Saturday evenings. She was a 'hit and run' partier. We would go to a bar, park, walk in, get a drink, and walk around, scoping the place out. We would always walk through and around the whole bar. If no one looked interesting by the time our drink was gone we would immediately leave and go to the next bar on the list. If a bar looked promising to Annie, for some unfathomable reason, which I never did decipher, we would settle in. My favorite way to go to a bar is to go with friends, get a table, so I can chat to, and dance with, the friends I came with. Annie never sat down at a table in a bar, although once in a while she perched on a high barstool with her back to the bar. She liked to stand around and wait for a handsome stranger to ask her to dance. Sometimes we met two guy friends who would ask both of us to dance, but often I was left standing by myself. If I didn’t want to go, Annie shamed me into it by making me feel like a bad friend, and a social dud. We played out this whole scene weekend after weekend, except when someone had a house party we were invited to. Annie waited all week for the weekends. I tagged along because it was better than staying alone in an empty flat.
Annie met a handsome Southern boy once at a bar. After Annie had been seeing Tad for a while, Tad set up a double date for Annie and him, his college roommate and me. We all met for a few drinks at a bar and ended up at the pool in the park near our apartment, after hours, playing chicken in the dark water with all our clothes on. We were having a very illegal good time until the police kicked us out. They did not give us tickets, just a warning. After changing clothes we went back to their apartment, supposedly to eat. They each went into their bedroom and turned off all the lights, leaving us in the living room with a bowl of popcorn. I guess we were supposed to follow them into their bedrooms and screw them silly, I was still a virgin, and I was with a guy I didn’t even know. I stole an umbrella, since it was raining by then, and Annie and I walked home. They did call to apologize the next day, but I never trusted that Southern boy. Annie thought he was great, and he was charming, but I felt he had a dark side. Even after he stole some jewelry from Linda and a book from me she defended him to the skies. He disappeared and we never saw him again, but Annie brought him up from time to time as her ideal and could never be dissuaded. She insisted that Linda chased him away.
Whenever Annie got a fairly serious boyfriend, Linda would flirt with him and exchange witty, sparkling repartee, until Annie would lose her happy nature and confront Linda. Sometimes Linda slept with the men that Annie liked and ruined the whole relationship. Linda and Peter had an “open” relationship, so she was free to do as she liked. She never met her own men though,, she had too much fun stealing Annie’s. It was amazing and disturbing to watch someone steal from a beauty by using her wits. And the men seemed quite surprised that in the end they lost both the beauty and the wit.
Of course, my unhappiness and frustration at school spilled over somewhat into my private life, but not as much as you would think. When I got home, I was in my haven and the cares of the day gradually fell away. I would think back over the day and try to analyze what I had done wrong and what I had done right and then I would square my shoulders, vow to do better the next day, and let it all go for a while. A kind of hope would bubble up as I planned lessons or graded papers that the next day would be better and sometimes it was. It took too much energy for my students to be terrible every day.
Then it would be the weekend and Annie would be ready to roll and that would take my mind off the classroom for a while. She was trying to turn me into a social animal. I was her project, along with the soul mate hunting thing. We also went to the park sometimes for a swim or a walk, or went shopping, something we both enjoyed. My first year of teaching I made $6,200 so I wasn’t exactly rich, but our whole flat only cost $120, ($40) plus utilities. I actually felt quite affluent.
Luke turned eighteen and I guess he decided that it was time to do the deed. It was winter and the flat was cozy and somehow we had it to ourselves. It was probably one of those days in winter break when teachers have a day off, but stockbrokers don’t. Of course, I could see the irony of losing my virginity to someone who was only one or two years older than some of my students, but we had been pussyfooting around this huge hunger for a long time. Luke decided that before we “did it”, we should get high. Marijuana had appeared in the flat from time to time, it was still somewhat unusual, but was getting to be more and more common everywhere around the university area. Students smoked joints right outside in the open at concerts.
Luke sat me down in the living room. I remember we had an old green leather couch, large and very comfortable. He set the joints on the coffee table and we lit one up. He took a hit and passed it to me. I shut one eye and took a puff and blew out the smoke.
“You have to inhale,” Luke said, my Marlboro man.
So in 1967, the same year the Surgeon General put the first warning on cigarette packs, Luke set out to teach me to inhale. He decided not to waste the marijuana until I got the hang of it.
“Go get your cigarettes,” he said. “I’ll show you how to inhale a cigarette first.”
Now I wanted Luke bad. We had been anticipating the deed since last June. We had the music. We had the incense, we had very little light on that snowy winter day. It looked pretty romantic with the soft brown light filtering through the curtains and the fireplace going. It was now or never.
“OK, here’s the cigarettes,” I said as I arrived back at the couch from the bedroom. “Now what?”
Luke took out a cigarette for me, lit it, took a drag, and handed it over. I puffed.
“No, you’re not inhaling,” he said. “There’s a little catch in the back of your throat. You have to relax your throat muscles and just let the smoke go down.”
I tried that a few times. Nothing.
“Turn around,” said Luke. He started to massage my shoulders. As he continues the massage he said, “Now try it.”
I tried again and the catch dissolved. The smoke went through and I started to cough. I tried again, no cough. I sat back on the couch and inhaled pensively until I felt a little light-headed.
“Now you’re ready,” he said.
He lit up the joint once again and sucked the marijuana far down into his lungs and held his breath, his lips in a straight line. After a few minutes he exhaled.
I copied him exactly and after several more coughing fits started to feel what I knew must be a buzz. I felt sort of floaty and light and silly. My brain cells were firing ideas, which spun out and then just disappeared. We started kissing, each kiss deep, seeming to last a long, long time.
“Give me your hand,” Luke said, and he pulled me after him into my dark bedroom. He took his time, he undressed me slowly, kissing my neck and mouth. I was opening the snap on his jeans, touching softly whatever was available. After a while there were no more clothes to take off and we moved to the bed. We lay down on tops of the cover.
Luke said with some urgency, “get a towel.”
I went naked through the empty apartment and got one of my old towels from the linen closed. It sort of broke the mood though. I spread the towel and dutifully laid myself upon it. We kissed some more. I was warming back up quickly. I was enjoying the wonderful silkiness and completeness of bare skin on bare skin for the first time, something I would never lose a taste for.
Luke moved my hand downwards and gave me his penis. It massaged it and it grew bigger and harder and our breathing grew faster and louder. Then he was on top of me. I liked his weight. He was pausing at the door of me. My body did not seem to want him to gain entrance, but my chemicals did. I pushed towards him and felt the pain and, vaguely, underneath it, the pleasure. I did not experience any heights of ecstasy, but when Luke was finished, he held me close for a while and we slept a bit. Then it was time for him to leave, he had to return the car he borrowed. My roommates would be home soon. He didn’t want to see them.
“It’ll be better next time,” he promised.
I put on a robe and walked him to the door, gave him a kiss and he was gone.
I was finished cleaning my mess and myself before anyone came home. When Linda came in, I was sitting in the corner of the green leather couch with my feet underneath me, tight against my tender privates, inhaling a cigarette and crying. I couldn’t stop. The tears just kept coming. Linda came in and sat in the easy chair across from me and asked me if I wanted to talk. I spilled my guts, of course, and she was actually very sympathetic and understanding. She said it was like that for her the first time.
“He didn’t hurt you did he?, she asked.
“No more than he had to,” I said, “I don’t know why I’m crying,” I said.
“It’s just that after he left I felt so sad.”
“Let me change my clothes,” Linda said, “You go wash your face and put on some makeup. We’ll go out and celebrate your first time.”
“Where’s Annie,” I asked.
“She had to work overtime,” Linda answered.
We went to the best Chinese restaurant and soon the table was covered with footed stainless steel dishes with silvery covers. Linda told me all about her first sexual encounter, which happened to her at a much younger age than mine had. She had fallen for a painter, much older than her, who lived an unconventional life in an old church in her hometown. After that first experience they had quite a long affair, which ended badly. She was so nice to me that my heart started to warm to her a bit, without forgetting some of her transgressions against Annie. By the time we left (we also had a couple of drinks) I felt much more festive and ready to get back to planning for Christmas with my family and at the apartment, and to planning lessons for the new semester. I decided I would not think about the reality of school, just the logistics. I didn’t want to begin to dread going back until I absolutely had to.
So I lost two maidenheads in one day, one in my throat, and one, you know where. From that day on I have never stopped inhaling tobacco smoke. It became a terrible addiction for me. I lost my psychological equanimity without my nicotine. And some of you will think I became a sex addict too, although I don’t really know about that. Fortunately, although marijuana became a fixture in my life for a while, I was never addicted to it. This combination of sex and cigarettes was enough to bring about my ultimate downfall though., and addicted or not the drugs played a part too.
Linda had the front bedroom, which was obviously built to be the master. It was the largest of the three bedrooms and she furnished it with some style from second hand furniture stores. Linda was from an eastern suburb (Smithvale was north of the city) known for its affluence and good schools. Her family, however, was not well off. They were a big Irish family with seven children and she was the oldest. She had long hair and a thin angular face and a little boy’s body, straight up and down, but she still managed to look confident, stylish, and arrogantly intelligent. She had heavy Modigliani style upper eyelids, which were her best feature. She was brisk and practical and wittily waspish, hard to warm up to. She had to wear thick-lensed glasses much of the time. She had an architect boyfriend who had the upstairs flat in the house next door. Most of these houses had been built within the same era and were almost identical except for the exterior color and landscaping.
The architect’s name was Peter. He was older than we were, in his thirties. He had long hair, which was just becoming the style at the time, and a stocky, very slightly overweight body. He was always brushing his hair off his face, but he had very kind eyes, and although he had the same dry wit as Linda he also had an air of languid ennui that seemed very mature. He was usually fatherly and friendly and stayed out of our roommate squabbles. He loved jazz, had a very expensive sound system. He used a bed for a sofa and covered it with a genuine cowhide throw and with many huge pillows. He loved to prop you comfortably among the pillows with some excellent headphones and select some John McLaughlin or Miles Davis for you to listen to. He was never called Pete. Some people are nickname people, some aren’t. Peter wasn’t.
I had the middle bedroom, which, like the first bedroom had two huge windows that started about 12” off the floor and went almost all the way to the ceiling. The windows were in the center of a wall with about 6” between them. On the opposite wall was a built-in dresser with bookcases built in on either side, all painted white. There were hardwood floors and the woodwork was stained dark. It was the most beautiful room I had ever possessed.
Annie had the third room, in the back, off the kitchen. Annie grew up in the back of beyond, way out past the northern suburbs, in farm country, although her parents were not farmers. Her grandparents were farmers, but her dad sold real estate and also bought real estate, which he subsequently sold or rented. Annie had ten kids in her family, of which she was the oldest. She was a natural beauty with high cheekbones and long, shiny, straight brown hair, and although she was short, she was perfectly proportioned. Linda liked to imply that Annie had no brains whatsoever, and since Annie had never had much opportunity to value her intelligence, she was an easy target. “ She’s inane,” Linda said. Linda sometimes referred to Annie as “Innie”, which,of course, made Annie very angry. Linda and Annie certainly needed a buffer. Although they worked for the same stockbroker, they had nothing else in common and did not get along very well. As Annie usually got the worst in any encounter, she avoided Linda’s company as much as possible, which was fairly easy given that Linda was usually with Peter.
In spite of the subtle hostility between these two I was happy with this new arrangement almost as soon as I moved in. Annie and I got along very well, and Linda, who should have gone to college, respected my degree and my job enough to prevent me from being a target for her sharp tongue.
Annie was a social girl; she still had a number of friends from high school who occasionally came into the city to go out to the bars with her. Annie wanted a husband, and not one from the sticks. She wanted a handsome husband from a good family. She combed the bars every weekend, especially the college bars hoping to meet one.
I was so busy with my first year of school, that at first, I was content to stay at home in the quiet flat to work on lesson plans and mark papers. Luke came to see me a few times, when he could catch a ride, but I was distracted, considering all the problems I was having in the classroom.
Eventually Annie lured me out of the house with her a few Friday and Saturday evenings. She was a 'hit and run' partier. We would go to a bar, park, walk in, get a drink, and walk around, scoping the place out. We would always walk through and around the whole bar. If no one looked interesting by the time our drink was gone we would immediately leave and go to the next bar on the list. If a bar looked promising to Annie, for some unfathomable reason, which I never did decipher, we would settle in. My favorite way to go to a bar is to go with friends, get a table, so I can chat to, and dance with, the friends I came with. Annie never sat down at a table in a bar, although once in a while she perched on a high barstool with her back to the bar. She liked to stand around and wait for a handsome stranger to ask her to dance. Sometimes we met two guy friends who would ask both of us to dance, but often I was left standing by myself. If I didn’t want to go, Annie shamed me into it by making me feel like a bad friend, and a social dud. We played out this whole scene weekend after weekend, except when someone had a house party we were invited to. Annie waited all week for the weekends. I tagged along because it was better than staying alone in an empty flat.
Annie met a handsome Southern boy once at a bar. After Annie had been seeing Tad for a while, Tad set up a double date for Annie and him, his college roommate and me. We all met for a few drinks at a bar and ended up at the pool in the park near our apartment, after hours, playing chicken in the dark water with all our clothes on. We were having a very illegal good time until the police kicked us out. They did not give us tickets, just a warning. After changing clothes we went back to their apartment, supposedly to eat. They each went into their bedroom and turned off all the lights, leaving us in the living room with a bowl of popcorn. I guess we were supposed to follow them into their bedrooms and screw them silly, I was still a virgin, and I was with a guy I didn’t even know. I stole an umbrella, since it was raining by then, and Annie and I walked home. They did call to apologize the next day, but I never trusted that Southern boy. Annie thought he was great, and he was charming, but I felt he had a dark side. Even after he stole some jewelry from Linda and a book from me she defended him to the skies. He disappeared and we never saw him again, but Annie brought him up from time to time as her ideal and could never be dissuaded. She insisted that Linda chased him away.
Whenever Annie got a fairly serious boyfriend, Linda would flirt with him and exchange witty, sparkling repartee, until Annie would lose her happy nature and confront Linda. Sometimes Linda slept with the men that Annie liked and ruined the whole relationship. Linda and Peter had an “open” relationship, so she was free to do as she liked. She never met her own men though,, she had too much fun stealing Annie’s. It was amazing and disturbing to watch someone steal from a beauty by using her wits. And the men seemed quite surprised that in the end they lost both the beauty and the wit.
Of course, my unhappiness and frustration at school spilled over somewhat into my private life, but not as much as you would think. When I got home, I was in my haven and the cares of the day gradually fell away. I would think back over the day and try to analyze what I had done wrong and what I had done right and then I would square my shoulders, vow to do better the next day, and let it all go for a while. A kind of hope would bubble up as I planned lessons or graded papers that the next day would be better and sometimes it was. It took too much energy for my students to be terrible every day.
Then it would be the weekend and Annie would be ready to roll and that would take my mind off the classroom for a while. She was trying to turn me into a social animal. I was her project, along with the soul mate hunting thing. We also went to the park sometimes for a swim or a walk, or went shopping, something we both enjoyed. My first year of teaching I made $6,200 so I wasn’t exactly rich, but our whole flat only cost $120, ($40) plus utilities. I actually felt quite affluent.
Luke turned eighteen and I guess he decided that it was time to do the deed. It was winter and the flat was cozy and somehow we had it to ourselves. It was probably one of those days in winter break when teachers have a day off, but stockbrokers don’t. Of course, I could see the irony of losing my virginity to someone who was only one or two years older than some of my students, but we had been pussyfooting around this huge hunger for a long time. Luke decided that before we “did it”, we should get high. Marijuana had appeared in the flat from time to time, it was still somewhat unusual, but was getting to be more and more common everywhere around the university area. Students smoked joints right outside in the open at concerts.
Luke sat me down in the living room. I remember we had an old green leather couch, large and very comfortable. He set the joints on the coffee table and we lit one up. He took a hit and passed it to me. I shut one eye and took a puff and blew out the smoke.
“You have to inhale,” Luke said, my Marlboro man.
So in 1967, the same year the Surgeon General put the first warning on cigarette packs, Luke set out to teach me to inhale. He decided not to waste the marijuana until I got the hang of it.
“Go get your cigarettes,” he said. “I’ll show you how to inhale a cigarette first.”
Now I wanted Luke bad. We had been anticipating the deed since last June. We had the music. We had the incense, we had very little light on that snowy winter day. It looked pretty romantic with the soft brown light filtering through the curtains and the fireplace going. It was now or never.
“OK, here’s the cigarettes,” I said as I arrived back at the couch from the bedroom. “Now what?”
Luke took out a cigarette for me, lit it, took a drag, and handed it over. I puffed.
“No, you’re not inhaling,” he said. “There’s a little catch in the back of your throat. You have to relax your throat muscles and just let the smoke go down.”
I tried that a few times. Nothing.
“Turn around,” said Luke. He started to massage my shoulders. As he continues the massage he said, “Now try it.”
I tried again and the catch dissolved. The smoke went through and I started to cough. I tried again, no cough. I sat back on the couch and inhaled pensively until I felt a little light-headed.
“Now you’re ready,” he said.
He lit up the joint once again and sucked the marijuana far down into his lungs and held his breath, his lips in a straight line. After a few minutes he exhaled.
I copied him exactly and after several more coughing fits started to feel what I knew must be a buzz. I felt sort of floaty and light and silly. My brain cells were firing ideas, which spun out and then just disappeared. We started kissing, each kiss deep, seeming to last a long, long time.
“Give me your hand,” Luke said, and he pulled me after him into my dark bedroom. He took his time, he undressed me slowly, kissing my neck and mouth. I was opening the snap on his jeans, touching softly whatever was available. After a while there were no more clothes to take off and we moved to the bed. We lay down on tops of the cover.
Luke said with some urgency, “get a towel.”
I went naked through the empty apartment and got one of my old towels from the linen closed. It sort of broke the mood though. I spread the towel and dutifully laid myself upon it. We kissed some more. I was warming back up quickly. I was enjoying the wonderful silkiness and completeness of bare skin on bare skin for the first time, something I would never lose a taste for.
Luke moved my hand downwards and gave me his penis. It massaged it and it grew bigger and harder and our breathing grew faster and louder. Then he was on top of me. I liked his weight. He was pausing at the door of me. My body did not seem to want him to gain entrance, but my chemicals did. I pushed towards him and felt the pain and, vaguely, underneath it, the pleasure. I did not experience any heights of ecstasy, but when Luke was finished, he held me close for a while and we slept a bit. Then it was time for him to leave, he had to return the car he borrowed. My roommates would be home soon. He didn’t want to see them.
“It’ll be better next time,” he promised.
I put on a robe and walked him to the door, gave him a kiss and he was gone.
I was finished cleaning my mess and myself before anyone came home. When Linda came in, I was sitting in the corner of the green leather couch with my feet underneath me, tight against my tender privates, inhaling a cigarette and crying. I couldn’t stop. The tears just kept coming. Linda came in and sat in the easy chair across from me and asked me if I wanted to talk. I spilled my guts, of course, and she was actually very sympathetic and understanding. She said it was like that for her the first time.
“He didn’t hurt you did he?, she asked.
“No more than he had to,” I said, “I don’t know why I’m crying,” I said.
“It’s just that after he left I felt so sad.”
“Let me change my clothes,” Linda said, “You go wash your face and put on some makeup. We’ll go out and celebrate your first time.”
“Where’s Annie,” I asked.
“She had to work overtime,” Linda answered.
We went to the best Chinese restaurant and soon the table was covered with footed stainless steel dishes with silvery covers. Linda told me all about her first sexual encounter, which happened to her at a much younger age than mine had. She had fallen for a painter, much older than her, who lived an unconventional life in an old church in her hometown. After that first experience they had quite a long affair, which ended badly. She was so nice to me that my heart started to warm to her a bit, without forgetting some of her transgressions against Annie. By the time we left (we also had a couple of drinks) I felt much more festive and ready to get back to planning for Christmas with my family and at the apartment, and to planning lessons for the new semester. I decided I would not think about the reality of school, just the logistics. I didn’t want to begin to dread going back until I absolutely had to.
So I lost two maidenheads in one day, one in my throat, and one, you know where. From that day on I have never stopped inhaling tobacco smoke. It became a terrible addiction for me. I lost my psychological equanimity without my nicotine. And some of you will think I became a sex addict too, although I don’t really know about that. Fortunately, although marijuana became a fixture in my life for a while, I was never addicted to it. This combination of sex and cigarettes was enough to bring about my ultimate downfall though., and addicted or not the drugs played a part too.
Friday, August 6, 2010
Chapter 12 - Augusta
Now I know that so far my portrait of my mother has been less than flattering, but that’s just because I have different goals from my mom. Her goal in life was to marry and have a family. She accomplished exactly what she wanted to accomplish. I can’t help it if it looked to me like the third ring of Dante’s Inferno,
She met my dad when she was nineteen through a group of mutual friends. From the beginning he was the only one for her. It was the middle of the Depression. Neither of Dad’s parents had jobs, Dad supported them. He didn’t know how to stop. My mother waited six years to marry my dad. As soon as they married, Dad’s parents got divorced and went to work. He probably should have cut them loose sooner.
Augusta was working in an office as a secretary. When Hobart married her she was twenty-five years old. Hobart was thirty. She worked days; he worked nights. For the first two years of marriage Augusta, on her way to work, waved from the bus window to Hobart as he drove home from work in the early morning. After two years of hardly seeing each other, as soon as they were in the same place at the same time, they started their family. They had one, two, three, four babies right in a row, two not even a whole year apart. Two years later the fifth baby appeared and they made the move to Smithvale.
Our city apartment seemed to be always neat and well organized. In our pictures we wore starched and ironed dresses and hair dos with ribbons. Mom told us that she did not know how to cook at all when she married, that she burned the pan the first time she tried to boil water. I remember when the pressure cooker blew up and spat potatoes all over the ceiling. I don’t know how cooking could have eluded her because she came from a very poor family, but apparently her mom did all the cooking. Although she lost track of what was cooking on the stove and burned things, by the time the oldest of us were in our teens, when she could pay attention, she was a pretty good cook.
In Smithvale, for some reason, Augusta’s housework often got the better of her. Having three more babies certainly could have done it. She just could not keep up with it all. Her floors were mopped or swept, her sinks, toilets, etc. were clean, but she just did not seem able to throw anything away. Things piled up.
Having a spotless house, however, is not necessarily a hallmark of great mothering. Augusta was a great mother.
When they tarred our road one hot summer day, after we all walked in the tar with our bare feet, Mom lined us all up on the back stairs and patiently cleaned our feet with Lestoil and then filled a tub with water for us to rinse our feet in. She didn’t rant and rave about her floors, none of us even made it inside. She didn’t spoil our fun. Our moods were just as good with clean feet as they had been when we were glorying in hot tar. We liked our clean feet and didn’t go back out to the tar either.
When anyone was sick, they got to lie in state on the living room couch all day and Mom made sure there was ice cream and/or ginger ale if they were up to it. If everyone was sick she was a tireless nurse. Her hand on your forehead felt like healing. We had measles, chicken pox, whooping cough, and some of us had mumps. It would take a long time from the time the first child got sick until the last child got well. In those days they felt it was good to expose everyone while they were young and let them get over it, not they we had any space to isolate someone anyway. We all made it through all of those childhood diseases.
Sometimes all the other neighborhood mothers came over and sat around in the back yard or the dining room. We couldn’t help hanging around to listen to them. The discussion always got around to childbirth, each mom trying to outdo the other with length of time in labor and other grueling details of blessed nativity. Augusta had a hard time competing. Once she was in labor for twenty minutes. She tended to have very small babies, 3 lbs 10 oz, 4 lbs 3 oz. When she had a six pounder it was considered huge. Even the small babies were completely formed and healthy although two of her babies had to stay in the hospital for at least a month after they were born. She wasn’t just a great mother; she was a lucky mother.
Hobart was a practical man. He handled all the money. If we needed something and he knew we didn’t have enough money, he believed we would just have to do without. Augusta, who had gone without more often than not, didn’t agree. Shoes were always a big issue and Augusta saw to it that we always got them. Hobart was forced to perform lots of budgetary magic over the years but he generally came through, or Gustie would nag him to death.
Augusta found time to join the PTA, to make cookies and cupcakes and cakes to send to school, to assist in a Brownie troop, and to take in extra kids to baby-sit for when money was tight, which was always. Even when we were grown we called Mom several times a week and everyone came back home every Sunday with husbands, kids, dogs, and relatives.
The girl across the street, Carrie, who was Robert’s age and had only one older brother, hated to go home. She had a spotless, beautifully decorated house to go home to. She also had a mom who never stopped yelling. And her mom and dad never stopped fighting. They drank and, of course, they smoked and screamed, a lot. We had to practically throw her out of our house. And Augusta hated to do that, but was more afraid of a tongue-lashing from Carrie’s “straight-talking” (“b” word) mom.
I guess I would have to say that Gustie had a gift. It was a gift for making a family and for making anyone who visited us feel like a temporary member of the family. When we went on a picnic, we always made a huge group with softball games and lots of food and laughter. Even when we went somewhere as simple as the Little League baseball field (which took the place of the old barracks the fire fighters used to burn) everyone we knew came along, like a long neighborhood parade, the biggest “family” at the ballpark.
They say about daughters that we all become our mothers. Even though I swore that what Augusta wanted was not what I wanted, even though I still did not want to be a housewife and a mother, I spent the next twenty years of my life trying to mold all the disparate groups of people who populated my life into one family after another. And because of Augusta’s excellent example, I was often able to succeed in creating or joining close nurturing groups of strangers, in spite of the fact that I had no idea that this was my goal.
She met my dad when she was nineteen through a group of mutual friends. From the beginning he was the only one for her. It was the middle of the Depression. Neither of Dad’s parents had jobs, Dad supported them. He didn’t know how to stop. My mother waited six years to marry my dad. As soon as they married, Dad’s parents got divorced and went to work. He probably should have cut them loose sooner.
Augusta was working in an office as a secretary. When Hobart married her she was twenty-five years old. Hobart was thirty. She worked days; he worked nights. For the first two years of marriage Augusta, on her way to work, waved from the bus window to Hobart as he drove home from work in the early morning. After two years of hardly seeing each other, as soon as they were in the same place at the same time, they started their family. They had one, two, three, four babies right in a row, two not even a whole year apart. Two years later the fifth baby appeared and they made the move to Smithvale.
Our city apartment seemed to be always neat and well organized. In our pictures we wore starched and ironed dresses and hair dos with ribbons. Mom told us that she did not know how to cook at all when she married, that she burned the pan the first time she tried to boil water. I remember when the pressure cooker blew up and spat potatoes all over the ceiling. I don’t know how cooking could have eluded her because she came from a very poor family, but apparently her mom did all the cooking. Although she lost track of what was cooking on the stove and burned things, by the time the oldest of us were in our teens, when she could pay attention, she was a pretty good cook.
In Smithvale, for some reason, Augusta’s housework often got the better of her. Having three more babies certainly could have done it. She just could not keep up with it all. Her floors were mopped or swept, her sinks, toilets, etc. were clean, but she just did not seem able to throw anything away. Things piled up.
Having a spotless house, however, is not necessarily a hallmark of great mothering. Augusta was a great mother.
When they tarred our road one hot summer day, after we all walked in the tar with our bare feet, Mom lined us all up on the back stairs and patiently cleaned our feet with Lestoil and then filled a tub with water for us to rinse our feet in. She didn’t rant and rave about her floors, none of us even made it inside. She didn’t spoil our fun. Our moods were just as good with clean feet as they had been when we were glorying in hot tar. We liked our clean feet and didn’t go back out to the tar either.
When anyone was sick, they got to lie in state on the living room couch all day and Mom made sure there was ice cream and/or ginger ale if they were up to it. If everyone was sick she was a tireless nurse. Her hand on your forehead felt like healing. We had measles, chicken pox, whooping cough, and some of us had mumps. It would take a long time from the time the first child got sick until the last child got well. In those days they felt it was good to expose everyone while they were young and let them get over it, not they we had any space to isolate someone anyway. We all made it through all of those childhood diseases.
Sometimes all the other neighborhood mothers came over and sat around in the back yard or the dining room. We couldn’t help hanging around to listen to them. The discussion always got around to childbirth, each mom trying to outdo the other with length of time in labor and other grueling details of blessed nativity. Augusta had a hard time competing. Once she was in labor for twenty minutes. She tended to have very small babies, 3 lbs 10 oz, 4 lbs 3 oz. When she had a six pounder it was considered huge. Even the small babies were completely formed and healthy although two of her babies had to stay in the hospital for at least a month after they were born. She wasn’t just a great mother; she was a lucky mother.
Hobart was a practical man. He handled all the money. If we needed something and he knew we didn’t have enough money, he believed we would just have to do without. Augusta, who had gone without more often than not, didn’t agree. Shoes were always a big issue and Augusta saw to it that we always got them. Hobart was forced to perform lots of budgetary magic over the years but he generally came through, or Gustie would nag him to death.
Augusta found time to join the PTA, to make cookies and cupcakes and cakes to send to school, to assist in a Brownie troop, and to take in extra kids to baby-sit for when money was tight, which was always. Even when we were grown we called Mom several times a week and everyone came back home every Sunday with husbands, kids, dogs, and relatives.
The girl across the street, Carrie, who was Robert’s age and had only one older brother, hated to go home. She had a spotless, beautifully decorated house to go home to. She also had a mom who never stopped yelling. And her mom and dad never stopped fighting. They drank and, of course, they smoked and screamed, a lot. We had to practically throw her out of our house. And Augusta hated to do that, but was more afraid of a tongue-lashing from Carrie’s “straight-talking” (“b” word) mom.
I guess I would have to say that Gustie had a gift. It was a gift for making a family and for making anyone who visited us feel like a temporary member of the family. When we went on a picnic, we always made a huge group with softball games and lots of food and laughter. Even when we went somewhere as simple as the Little League baseball field (which took the place of the old barracks the fire fighters used to burn) everyone we knew came along, like a long neighborhood parade, the biggest “family” at the ballpark.
They say about daughters that we all become our mothers. Even though I swore that what Augusta wanted was not what I wanted, even though I still did not want to be a housewife and a mother, I spent the next twenty years of my life trying to mold all the disparate groups of people who populated my life into one family after another. And because of Augusta’s excellent example, I was often able to succeed in creating or joining close nurturing groups of strangers, in spite of the fact that I had no idea that this was my goal.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)