SOMETIMES (part 5 of 8)

SOMETIMES-5

81- People and Places

Boulder City’s population of 4,000 was a small, tight community. The local bar gave out free beers if the sun didn’t shine any day in Boulder City. In the eight months we lived there, they gave away beers only once.

There was a small cafe on the Main Street in town called ‘The Coffee Cup Cafe’ where coffee was a dime for all you could drink. They had a nice display outside the cafe of all sorts of cacti, and coming straight from New York, with no concept of ‘cacti’ beyond what I saw on TV, I ventured over and not only touched, but started petting the fuzzy flat ear of one of the cacti because it seemed so interesting to me. Texturally, it was very cuddly. I wanted to get the whole experience of what a cactus was.

Well, not to be disappointed, the experience I came away with was hundreds of tiny little ‘hairs’ that wound up stuck in all of my fingers. The ‘hairs’ were hardly visible, but oh so evident. As we sat down to the table in The Coffee Cup, I began pulling as many of the ‘hairs’ out of my fingers as possible. I found my teeth very instrumental in nabbing those little suckers from my fingers. Except not. What DID happen, was all the hairs I yanked out with my teeth, wound up lodged in my tongue! So, there i sat, for the better part of the day, pulling the little hairs from my tongue with my fingers, and so on, back and forth. Lesson learned.

Mom became friendly with the couple who owned the local five and dime.

We stopped in one day to pass the time, and the adults got to talking while I roamed the store, which contained a million things I could have easily put on my ‘buy me’ list. I was in a position to hear something of their conversation, which got around to birthing of babies. Mom mentioned to them that when I was born, I was blue. That’s all I had to hear to send me spinning into oblivion. I don’t think I ever got as angry at my mom as I did at that moment. I felt deceived. I felt invisible. I felt I didn’t matter.

I recalled our conversation back in Yonkers when I asked her if I was a Blue Baby. And she said ‘No’. And now she was telling perfect strangers that I was. My heart broke, because now I knew she had lied to me. I had never known Mom to lie. It wasn’t a question as to whether it was good for me to hear this or not. It wasn’t a question of ‘protecting’ me. My anger was riled because she didn’t seem to care that she lied. She didn’t seem to think I needed to know or care either. And worst of all, it was ‘okay’ for perfect strangers to know. And at that instant, my trust in her reached an all time low. All in those few seconds.

We returned to the car and headed to our next destination. I sat and looked out my window, remaining silent as we drove, feeling betrayed, holding back tears. Mom said a few things and I barely responded. She asked questions and I wrestled to answer.

Then she asked if I was alright. I said,”Yes”, and it went on and on like that for a while. Then I began to cry.

“Why didn’t you tell me I was a blue baby when I asked you?” I blurted out.

She was stunned. “ You weren’t a Blue Baby!”

“Then why did you say I was?”

“I never said that.”

“Yes you did, you told those people I was a Blue Baby!”

“Oh.....I said you were blue when you were born, because you lacked oxygen. But you were not a Blue Baby.”

“Are you sure? It sounded to me like you said I was a Blue Baby!”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“Okay.”

Thinking back on it after the conversation, I realized she did say I was ‘blue’ when I was born. Now, looking up the term on the internet, I certainly did fit the description of a Blue Baby to some degree. Except for the nitrate to nitrite thing. But the lack of oxygen was accurate, no matter how it happened.

I never really came to terms with that answer. But I let it go for the moment. I had to.

82- Mom and Dad

Life was pretty peaceful except for those regular phone calls we made to friends that kept us abreast of Dad’s intentions at any given moment. He eventually updated his plan, and now it was definite that he would kill mom, take my sister with him, and put me in an orphanage. Wonderful. Heartwarming. I knew we didn’t get along much, but this was a little rough to hear.

He had it all planned out. I can’t say what I think he was feeling when he said that. I can’t say I ever knew exactly what he was feeling at any given time, except I was pretty sure I knew when he was angry. Somehow it would have been nice, on some level, to hear that he missed us. Eventually, dad cashed in all of our insurance policies, as I imagine money was getting tough for him. Drinking costs money. And he no longer had the additional paycheck from Mom.

He was a machinist by trade and was meticulous in everything he did, including any plans he made. He was brilliant with anything he decided to create. There was nothing he couldn’t do. I wondered, at the time, why he hated us/me so much.

What I have come to understand now, much later, is that it had nothing to do with us. It had everything to do with him. And knowing only little about his past didn’t help anything. Mom was told that his parents died before I was born, but she didn’t really know that to be true, either. I don’t think it was.

I assumed he had no siblings, because he never spoke of them. But he never spoke much at all. Whatever happened to him, must have been devastating. He truly was someone you could never get to know fully. Mom mentioned that in passing every so often.

83-The Sneeze

When dad sneezed, it wasn’t a typical ‘ahh-choo,” it was a series of sounds that I came to be amused with and imitated on demand over time. He always carried his hankie in his back pocket, and always retrieved it right in time to catch what was the result of those masterful sneezes. He also had top dentures.

I recall one day during winter when a good deal of snow had fallen, and Brother and I were out in the backyard, building a snow igloo. Dad came out to see what we were doing and stood on the back patio, watching as we created big bricks of snow with the flat shovel for the igloo. Suddenly dad sneezed, with no hankie in hand, and his denture came flying out of his mouth and landed deep into the virgin snow, and as we watched, we saw a little bit of steam rise from that spot. Brother and I laughed and laughed. Dad found no comedic value in the experience. We retrieved his teeth and went back to our igloo. I have to say we repeated that story over and over again throughout the years.

84- Creativity

I came to find out later that his mother left his father at some point during his growing up and he remained living with his dad until ‘whenever’. His mom apparently never surfaced again. I can only guess his father was the model he chose to emanate. And so when my mom left him, this was the ultimate betrayal, and his bad behavior spiraled even more.

What makes a person repeat bad behavior? Most likely the same thing that makes us repeat good behavior. It’s the only thing we grow to know and be comfortable with. It’s the only way we know to react to unfavorable or any other situations. I do know he had an Aunt we visited once or twice. She never gave much of a clue about him, and to be honest, I was far too young to remember more than the fact she made ‘gel’ and stored it in her little shed, buried deep into her back yard in Upstate NY. The jars of gel didn’t have regular canning caps on them, but instead, a layer of paraffin to keep her efforts airtight. That was the most interesting part of the visit to me. We always left with some of her efforts to enjoy when we returned home.

Dad could also be a good guy. He let me watch as he performed his magic with wood, concrete and whatever have you. I know how to work wood and build walls with cement and block. I know how to use all kinds of tools, and create most anything I want. I watched and paid attention, seldom asking questions. His work was always nothing less than perfect. Mom would say that when he trimmed the hedges on the property, it took all day, but you could bounce a dime on them when he was done. I often watched him when he was building something. It interested me. And I learned quite a bit in a small amount of time. I never saw Sister or Brother take interest in what he was doing. And still, he and I weren’t close.

It disturbed me quite a bit to see his handiwork tossed in a pile of garbage years later when my brother’s kids inherited the ride-on donkey he meticulously created. It had gone through all three of us and was still in perfect shape when I gave it up. I always admired his handiwork. As much as dad was a sonofabitch at times, his handiwork defied everything we came to know about his faults. If he were here today, I would have a long, long conversation with him.

Mom was also great with building things. She liked crafts and projects like building that pond. She painted in watercolor. We were a family of doers. No one was inept. If something had to be fixed, we fixed it. We hatched and nursed baby birds who had been abandoned until they could fly away. We picked up every stray animal and gave it a home.

Mom and I sat and made Christmas ornaments together from emptied out eggs and cigarette boxes. We painted the eggs and applied glitter and sequined strings inside and out. Mom cut up old Christmas cards to create winter scenes inside the eggs, attached with small drops of paraffin to hold them in place. No glue guns were available in the 50s, so paraffin wax was the ‘glue of choice ‘ for these purposes. Elmer’s glue eventually became a household staple, but until then, paraffin was ‘God’. Later, the emptied Marlboro flip top boxes we wrapped to look like fancy Christmas gifts, were also hung on the Christmas tree.

Brother built amazing tree houses, and as I mentioned, the cement pond in the back yard with Mom. Dad built the luxury rabbit run and an attached enclosed garden where we planted all kinds of vegetables. When the patio was finished, dad also built a beautiful red brick barbecue fireplace that took up the entire corner of the patio where many a cookout turned into a masterpiece. My recollection was of the many marshmallows we roasted over that fireplace. We grabbed a stem from the forsythia bush, slid off the leaves and flowers and plopped on marshmallows, sometimes three at a time, to gently brown or burn and then feast upon, layer after layer.

I started liking lightly browned marshmallows and then eventually graduated to burning them so they continued burning to ash while still on the stick, then blowing out the flame, and pulling off only the charred outer part to eat, leaving a soupy lump of marshmallow underneath, begging to be returned to the flame and did the same thing all over again and again, until there was nothing left on the stick.

I tried my hand at building a go-cart. I wanted it to look like a Model-T car, and to some extent, it did. I thought so, anyway. It had a roof that projected over the front and back, with a little dip, the front sitting lower than the back. The wheels were old carriage wheels I found in the trash. I made sure that behind the seat was a wooden box. It would be where my rabbits would sit when I was riding in my go-cart. I learned how go-carts were constructed over the past few years by studying everyone else’s. I even manufactured a simple breaking system of sorts that most didn’t have.

I secretly wanted my bicycle to be a motor scooter, so I created a platform to put my feet on when going down hill or coasting. A pretend motor scooter. Most all of my projects stemmed from something I wanted but would probably never get unless I created them myself. I have been reminded that most girls didn’t do that kind of ‘stuff’, meaning woodworking and mechanics and such. And school didn’t offer woodworking to girls until much later. We were stuck with Home Ec, which consisted of learning how to make stewed prunes and cinnamon toast. I imagine that was supposed to come in handy later on. I can’t tell you how many stewed prunes I made in time to come. Yeah, sure, it’s a real favorite of mine.

Sewing class was interesting, but I learned how to sew early on. Remember, I made Nutzy a complete wardrobe. My sewing teachers disliked me. They said I ran the treadle machines too fast in Pennsylvania, and I neglected to baste in NY. Mrs. Jarman made me rip out stitches all the time because I didn’t show her my ‘basting’ stitches. Eventually, I used the class to make whatever I wanted. It’s a wonder she didn’t fail me.

Sewing is a fun thing for me, actually. The sky is the limit with what you can do. Years later, I felt accomplished when I made a slipcover for a 10’ couch, complete with piping and zipper. We used the slipcover for many years, for as long as we had the couch, and then the person it went to when we moved, continued to enjoy it. I loved using of all sorts of fabrics in the same project. This sort of theme had become quite trendy in some areas.

All in all, we were a ‘doing’ family. It was a good family, sometimes. We were always doing something. Creativity was in our blood. Just that ‘one little thing’ got in the way.

85- Alcohol

For troubled pasts, alcohol gave violence and pain and anger a place to show its ugly face. Alcohol creates separation. No one can understand the mindset of someone drinking except another person who is also drinking. For years, a good part of me hated Dad. I hated everything he did that destroyed the family.

Now, I understand a little more. I hate that he was so troubled and tortured in his own mind, and that alcohol was his only pathway to expression of his own dissatisfaction with his life. And then it became his illness and insanity. He hurt everyone he loved constantly, and became reckless with his family, the ones who cared the most about him, including himself. Only those close to him saw and experienced this. And it became too late to fix, eventually. As we know, you have to admit your problem with substances, and you have to believe you can be fixed. There was no real place to recuperate, even if you wanted to, back then, going ‘away’ for a time would be a stigma neither you or your family would ever outlive. You might as well move to another state and start all over. And to my knowledge, there really was no group or program to become a part of for help. So people lived with the problem. Kids and spouses suffered and often tried to ‘cover up’, or lived in denial, with kids often repeating the pattern in their own lives. A very sad scenario. The truth is, those that pointed fingers generally had a few of those skeletons in their own closets.

86- Welcome Back To North Carolina, Let’s Eat

Word came back that brother was due to be discharged from the Marine Corps eight months after we landed in Nevada, and needed our help.

He was now stationed at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. It seems they didn’t want to give him his discharge. I doubt they really wanted him to remain in their presence any more than he wanted to be there. But I do believe they wanted to make him sweat a little. The Marines and brother did not fare well together. Brother wound up seeing a lot of the Brig over his four year stint. Mom thought ‘The Service’ would straighten out Brother. I think Brother thought he would straighten out ‘The Service’. They were both wrong.

Over the eight months, we acquired a few more items for living, and needed a way to transport our new possessions, somehow. So, we built a little trailer to pull behind the car, painted it as close to Algier Rose as possible, to match the car, and stored everything we owned in it. All items were packed in our ‘go to’ luggage; apple boxes we managed from the local grocery store. A permanent trailer hitch was welded to the car.

Somewhere between Nevada and North Carolina, where brother was now stationed, there were a few good sized thunder storms. The trailer was covered with a thick canvas, but we didn’t realize until we reached the other end of our trip, that the canvas leaked and the apple boxes got drenched, along with everything in them. We gave the boxes a decent burial and salvaged what contents we could.

The music box from Murray got soaked, and literally fell apart into many pieces in my hand. It was difficult to fix, so I kept the pieces while I tried to think of what to do with it in time. I wound up creating a small wooden box in Sculpture class at SVA after High School. The ballerinas were replaced with carved wooden penguins, who now dance with each other to ‘I Could Have Danced All Night’.

In North Carolina, we rented a small furnished house trailer, 8’ wide by 30’ long, which included a peanut farm across the small dirt road from us on one side, and Queens Creek on the other side. The trailer sat on the edge of a small cliff, where Queens Creek ran about 100 ft. below. A long, steep, wooden stairway took you down to the creek, where a small wooden pier tethered an old rickety rowboat with a couple of oars. The creek was more like a river with enough of a span to take a rowboat out and explore the area for the day.

Wild boar inhabited the peanut field and many a time I came face to face with them. When they snorted at me, closing in, I would take off back ‘like a bat out of Hell’ to the trailer. They would probably never have harmed me, but they seemed very intimidating and I wasn’t ready to challenge that.

Down the road was Clem’s.. who sold clams. You can’t make that stuff up.

Clem was a native to North Carolina and sold buckets of clams for $2. I never cared for clams, but brother and mom did and brother often showed up, toting a pail of clams during our stay there.

A hobby I picked up there was fishing for crabs. I found that if I took a piece of raw chicken and tied it securely to a length of butcher cord, I could dangle it in the water off the pier to attract crabs. After a few moments, I would raise the cord to the surface, bringing with it a crab or two, who were trying to snag the chicken. Taking my trusty fisherman’s net and I’d swoop that crab up and toss him in the rowboat that was tied to the dock. I would collect maybe four to six crabs and tote them up the long stairway back to the trailer and mom would cook them for dinner. I didn’t like crab either, so I would opt for a red hot dog and some chips.

Southern hot dogs, a ‘delicacy’ found only south of the border, were a bright red color, rendering the water bright pinkish red when boiled, and the bun a bright pink when you served it. They had a little bit of a spicy taste and were a favorite for many. I have no idea what they were made of. I can only imagine.

87- School Time

A few weeks had passed since we arrived in North Carolina and mom thought it might be a good idea to enroll Sister and myself into the local public schools. The same thing happened again with the records. I gave them the information from Boulder City, and since Boulder City didn’t have any records, they couldn’t exactly forward any to them that made any sense at all.

I had to be evaluated to see what class I was best suited for. My age always determined the grade. This was the way it went with every school from then on.

All the schools I ever went to were predominately white. And this school was no exception. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but a few years later, it dawned on me that segregation was still very much alive in the South at that time. It didn’t seem out of the ordinary to attend a school that was white only because that’s what it was in Yonkers and even Boulder City. My Yonkers school had one black family, I believe. Boulder City, I believe, had none.

A side trip to the deeper south one weekend became a history lesson in racial discrimination. I saw signs on public water fountains and bathrooms that instructed ‘whites only’ and ‘coloreds only’. The facilities for ‘coloreds’ were always unkempt and ‘lesser’, while ‘whites’ always indicated something so much better. All I could think of was how it had to feel to be treated like that, for no reason. At all. Just the color of your skin. “My God,” I thought, “this is everything we talked and learned about in school.” I thought this was done and gone and over with. But it wasn’t.

I heard the N-word spoken time and time again, and not necessarily in a derogatory tone like it was in New York. It also became apparent that this was a term everyone in the South used. I always found it to be ugly sounding, and maybe because of the tone I was used to hearing it in. But it’s never been anything I’d ever use.

The truth is, every part of the country in those days, taught American history differently. In the South, THEY won the war. In the North, THEY won the war. Slavery was wrong in the North, and in the South, the people still lived it to some extent, even though it showed differently on paper. You could feel it. People said things were ‘understood’ in the South and behaviors were well learned early on. I thought it was creepy how the whites kept their superior mindset and the blacks accepted it...outwardly, anyway. I wasn’t in a position to make any changes or defy the rule of law there, but I definitely witnessed the inequality of it all. It made me sad. No one should have to live that way.

Sixth grade in Boulder City had been the first school year for me that history touched on slavery and the racial injustices that had existed in this country long ago. But the white South didn’t recognize the injustices, they felt this made perfect sense, and their poor excuses for their bad treatment of people of color did not set well with me. I wasn’t popular in my beliefs.

Because the history of slavery was depicted much differently in the North than the South in school, I was intrigued with all of it and truth be told, it was the only subject I took particular interest in as far as History went.

During my last year in High School in New York, located in an area of some affluence in Yonkers, I had the possibility of actually failing history and going to Summer School. Mom said Summer School was out of the question, so I went into an experimental class in my senior year. The only class I would have ever failed in my school experience. The fact that History was told differently and at different times in different states did not work in my favor. I missed a great deal, moving from state to state and school to school.

So in my last year of school, I was in this experimental class in Yonkers. To avoid failing the class, I outlined the entire history book, nothing of which I could easily wrap my head around at the time. Because it was a Regents course,I would have to take a NY Regents test at the end of the year. If you passed the class and not the NY State Regents, you received an Academic Diploma. If you passed the Regents and not the class, you got a Regents Diploma. If you passed both, you also got a Regents diploma. If you didn’t pass either, you failed the course. I think that’s how it went, at least. It never made much sense. But it turned out to my advantage.

The brainiacs in that class did well in the class but few passed the Regents. I, on the other hand, passed the History Regents with flying colors, because, luckily, it was predominantly on American Slavery. I guess the upper middle class high school student wasn’t as affected or interested with the inequality of race in this country and it’s origins. Shocker.

88- Time To Move / The New Place

That mobile home we rented in North Carolina was $30 per month, and during harsh rain and wind storms, propped up on cinderblocks, was going to rock right off the cliff and slide down into Queens Creek. Those times were scary, but I think the night Mom went to light the oven and it blew up in her face, more cinched the move to another place to live.

I was getting ready for bed one evening, getting ready to climb into my top bunk, when all of a sudden a big ‘BOOM’ let loose and Mom went flying to the other side of the room, which wasn’t very far. I heard her hit the wall of the trailer with force. Smoke filled the air and the robe she was wearing was burned away and melted in the front. One side of her face, hair and hand were burned, and we quickly set off for the hospital. It was fortunate that Brother was there at the time. Apparently she was trying to light the oven when it blew up in her face. The smell of burnt hair is one that is unmistakable, and Mom was fortunate that the burns weren’t even deeper.

Once at the hospital, the nurses applied cold, wet compresses to the burns, but they decided to wring out the drenched compresses AFTER they were already on mom’s arm. At that, Mom grabbed the compresses and flung them across the room. They didn’t seem to know what to do with that, but Mom never had tolerance for bad nursing.

The hair grew back and scarring on her face and arm were minimal enough that you didn’t notice them at first glance when they healed. None of us trusted the oven from then on.

It was time to move.

We moved from Queens Creek to another place that was an actual Trailer Park. They hadn’t gotten around to calling them Mobile Homes yet, so, yes, it was a Trailer Park. It was considered a decent way to live and we had neighbors in this somewhat landscaped area that were bringing up their families and living happily. But no peanut field, no creek and no Clem.This new trailer was 40 ft long and 10 ft. wide and you would have thought we were renting a penthouse.

89- Nurse Stories

Mom often told her stories of Drs. back in the day who showed up to the hospital cold drunk to deliver babies. They were called in at all times of the night when their patient went into labor, and sometimes while ‘drunker than a Lord’, they entered the delivery room to bring that bouncing baby into the world. On more than one occasion, the Dr. dropped the baby and it died right there on the delivery room floor. Nurses didn’t utter a word in those days for fear of losing their jobs and never working again. So they kept quiet and looked at one another as if to say, “We all saw this, but no one saw this, right?” The patient was under general anesthesia, and not a word was ever uttered about it ever again. The birth went down as a still birth and everyone stayed quiet as a clam.

On one occasion, she recalled a Dr. who decided a woman would have her baby at a certain time, like it or not. He had a golf game he didn’t want to miss, so put the patient under and ripped the baby from her womb, literally killing the baby. Another ‘still birth ‘ recorded.

She also often said that in many cases, nurses were left to deliver the babies when the Drs. didn’t show up on time. In fact, she said most babies were delivered by nurses, while the Dr. stood by and watched.

Mom didn’t have a lot of respect for Drs. like these and tried to stay away from them. Nurses in those days never talked about these atrocities, and the patient was often anesthetized enough to never know what happened. And of course, no one was allowed in delivery rooms but the drs and nurses and the anesthetized patient.

Mom used to say that many Drs. had a ‘God Complex’ and felt they could not only do no wrong, but condoned every mistake they ever made. They trusted nurses would never tell, and they didn’t.

These days, with relatives and friends in the delivery room, things are very different. Doctors can be held accountable.. I was fortunate enough to have a Dr. that not only allowed who I wanted in the delivery room, but also allowed us to take videos. We weren’t quick enough to catch my first born, but were able to video my second be born. To be able to see yourself be born has to be an extraordinary feeling.

90- Mary

At the end of the school year in North Carolina, there was an event called Field Day. It was like an ‘Olympics’ for school kids in each school. Being that it was bordering summer and warm weather, the school got together and all the kids competed against each other in various activities. High jump, long jump, climbing and running, you name it. We were all trying to figure out how we measured up with each other. A girl I had become friends with, Mary Deets, decided she wanted to have a running contest with me before the Field Day arrived.

Mary was an unusual girl and not well understood. She must have had some deficits, because she reacted to her peers so strangely. She was smart, and always had her nose in a book of some sort, and that was the extent of what I knew about her. Her black curly hair hung in her pale, white face with a few dots of freckles scattered here and there. Her healthy set of large white teeth had a slight overbite and her thick black rimmed glasses accentuated her large features. Kids made fun of her continually and I was determined to change that if I could.

I befriended her and we got along well, for the most part. Every now and then, I recognized a bit of jealousy from her with many of the friends I seemed to have made. She was by no means shy and put on the air of pride and being better than everyone else, a sure sign that she had no self esteem at all.

When she was having a bad day, and might have been irked with something I said or did, or anyone else for that matter, you’d ask what was wrong, to which her immediate response would be,” I was just going to ask you that same question!”

At first, I believed her, and thought that was extraordinary, but eventually, I realized it was her standard answer for a question she didn’t want to answer. I eventually grew tired of defending her, but in no way ever made fun of her. I’m certain she had her own story to fill a book.

This one day before school, she must have made some comment to some other kids about her being able to beat me in any race. The kids on the playground took that proclamation and ran with it. They, of course, couldn’t wait to tell me this. I was not interested. Then she approached me and and dared me. I refused. Then she started calling me names, so I decided I had had enough, and agreed to a race the next day on the playground. Knowing I was a good runner didn’t make me feel better or worse, but I really wasn’t interested in making her look bad. But, also, I would not fake it and lose the race. I’m not that person.

The group of kids that gathered on the playground the next morning were all wound up about the race. I made one more attempt to squelch the race, but she insisted, along with some uncomplimentary remarks. The kids set up the starting point and some waited at the end line. 1-2-3 and we were off. I was leaving her in the dust when she threw herself on the ground and insisted I tripped her. I did not. I was nowhere near her. The kids now had even more fodder to ridicule and make her feel worse about herself. She never spoke to me again.

91- Field Day

I had made it into every Field Day activity that was being offered, and they held up some of them to make sure I could make it in time to compete in all of them. I won every single one, except when it came to the high jump. Another girl and myself tied. It came down to tossing a nickel. And I won.

Now, something happened during those Field Day races. I outdid every time I held prior to the actual day. When I was doing the high jump, I actually felt something help raise me up to get me over the pole. It seemed almost effortless. Was it was adrenaline or something spiritual? I don’t know. But it was very evident and I recall being very surprised at the time. I didn’t have time to think much more about it while I was participating, but later on, I remember being stunned, somewhat. I was sure that I could never have done that high jump like that again, especially.

92- Charity Begins At Home

When mom wasn’t going to Court to try and win a case to get brother out of the Military, she was waiting tables at Captain Charlie’s, a seafood restaurant in Swansboro.

On the weekends, we drove the car down various roads where l would run behind the car, throwing empty bottles that’d been cast to the side of the road, into the open trunk of our car. When I became tired, or the trunk was filled, or both, we made our way to the local Piggly Wiggly to redeem the bottles for cash. Whatever helped the finances that day.

Everything we did, we had fun with. We were sure to be able to talk and tell stories about it later on. Life wasn’t so bad. We laughed a lot, did things together, and there was no fighting. Sister had her friends she loved to visit and hang out with. Brother visited as much as possible. And then, always off waiting in the wings, was the fear that came looming in when Dad found out our location, and we’d have to move.

One weekend we drove into an area where Cypress and Cedar trees grew. We cut down some Cedar branches with a hacksaw, and then found some Cypress ‘knees’ that stuck out of the watery swamp, and cut out a few of those as well.

When we arrived back at the trailer, we cut several chunks from the cedar branch.The cedar was fragrant and it was then that Mom decided we needed to make a trip to a local ‘bone pile’ somewhere.

We found a cemetery, and just like NY, they had a place where all the old grave decorations were retired to. We found dozens of plastic flowers, all colors and sizes and shapes, and we filled the trunk with them.

Back at the trailer, we washed them in the sink, taking care to clean every inch of whatever dirt or weather had done to them. We drilled holes in the top of each chunk of cedar and stuck little sprigs of the plastic flowers in them. We then sat, marveling at our creations. Mom said they looked good enough to sell.

That’s all I had to hear. The next day I came home from school, and while Mom was at work, I grabbed a cardboard box and made the rounds in the trailer park, knocking on doors and asking people if they wanted to buy a decorative flower centerpiece for Catholic Charities. Every one who answered the door gladly gave me a dollar and picked their favorite piece from my cardboard box. Eight in all. I came home with an empty box and eight dollar bills in my pocket.

That night when mom got off of work, we sat at the table and I smacked down the eight dollars in front of her. That was a lot of money in those days. Mom looked at the money and then looked at me, and puzzled, almost fearing my answer, she asked,”Where did that come from?”

I explained that since we made those beautiful centerpieces we thought we could sell, I decided to do that. When I explained about the Catholic Charities part, her eyes widened as she stared at me in disbelief, and then burst into laughter so hard I thought she would fall off her chair. Then, regaining her composure, she looked straight at me and said, “Christine, I can’t believe you did that, and I’m impressed, and don’t you EVER do that again!”

I said it was my contribution to the family, and I was happy I could do it. She said she could never take that money, and it was all mine. I kept it in a jar for the longest time, trying to decide what I would do with it. No, we didn’t think even one second about donating it to any church.

Mom made a lamp with the ‘knees’ which we had forever.

93-Captain Charlie’s

Captain Charlie’s was a nice restaurant, linen table cloths and napkins, subdued lighting and good flatware. Fish was fresh, and occasionally they would catch a giant sea turtle and offer that for Specials Of The Day.

I’m not a fan of fish, nor turtles, unless they are swimming in a pond or lake or the ocean. But this restaurant was a popular place to eat. Still, tipping was not mandatory and especially in the South, people hung on to their money and it seemed that waiting staff were not considered much more than maids to most of them. Tipping was too contemporary of a concept for most.

Times were tough and money was short, but mom always managed a couple of mints from the restaurant cashier station for me at two cents a piece each night. Eventually, a position opened up at the Catholic hospital in New Burn, run by nuns. This was an opportunity to get us through the hard times, and waiting tables soon became a thing of the past. I wasn’t used to seeing mom taking orders from strangers, anyway.

94- Nursing

Mom always said that nursing was a good vocation to have, as you could always be sure of a job, no matter where you ended up. Although this is mostly true, there are people who can do this type of work, and others that cannot. I, personally, cannot.

When we first entered Nevada from the Arizona border via Hoover Dam, we stopped our car just short of the Dam when we saw a man had been run off the road and up onto a rocky hill by the roadside. Mom would always stop to see if she could help in some way until the ambulance arrived. Her nursing often took her outside the walls of a hospital and her good will was immeasurable towards people.

Mom pulled the car over and went to help the man, a true, blue, skinny, old cowboy, who must have broken his leg in the crash. I walked over to view the situation, and as I stood watching the man writhing in pain as they tried to remove his cowboy boot, I began feeling a little strange. I made it back to the car, and sat down in the back seat, put my head between my knees and the world went dark while I broke out in an intense sweat from head to toe. I was coherent, but my world became dark for a few moments. Eventually my sight returned and I could feel a very deep sense of sickness in the pit of my stomach.

Although this particular intense feeling was a new wrinkle in the life of Christine, I had always seemed to feel other people’s pain and I thought it was normal. I thought everyone did. When I saw an open cut or blood from a wound, my arms and legs would throb with pain. They still do. And it was fairly intense. Enough that I would have to grab my extremities to help make it stop. I thought this was a natural reaction and why people grimace when they see things like this.

But this time there was no blood. I saw only an old war-torn cowboy lying down on the sandy shoulder of the desert road while his car was half way up a rocky slope, repeating a shout in his pain, ‘Lordy Lordy Lordy! Oh Lordy Lordy Lordy!’, as they attempted removing his boot.

Many years later, it dawned on me. I had felt his pain and agony. I learned that when a person has these reactions, they are feeling the other person’s pain, physically. I came to understand I was an empath. I could handle my own cuts and bruises, but it was difficult to handle other’s. It was almost as if I felt other’s pain more than my own.

After high school and then Art school, I began to consider my mom’s suggestion that nursing might carry me through life if Art didn’t. She dropped me off in front of the building one afternoon to apply at a nursing school she was familiar with. As soon as I reached the steps, I turned back around and got back in the car.

“I can’t do this. It’s not me. I wish I could, but I can’t” and we went off to enjoy the day with never another word about it. I never regretted my decision.

95- Oh, Sister

Sister had a tough time during her growing up. She was sixteen when Mom left Dad. Up to that point she experienced mostly discord in her life, like myself, but in addition, also experienced real physical abuse from Dad. I always felt this was partly due to her inability to listen and not speak. She was the Queen of ‘Back-Talk’. There were times I didn’t think she would make it through some of Dad’s displays of temper. And, I’ve never understood why someone would choose to live with someone who treated them badly if they didn’t have to. Even Brother treated her poorly, but she carried those torches for both Brother and Dad until her last day on earth, and beyond, I’m sure. Dad and Brother remained her heroes until her last breath.

She reminded me when I was pregnant with my first child that I was a ‘mistake’. However, that was already evident to me when Mom and I had our talk back in Spring of ‘62. Mom explained to me that day that she would have left dad years before, but then I came along and she had to put it off. And then, at 11 years old, Mom felt I was old enough to understand the situation. Which I did. She didn’t blame me, or resent me, or even in anger, say things to hurt me. And she would never used the term ‘mistake’.

Push forward many years later, and Sister decided that my knowing I was a ‘mistake’ wasn’t drastic enough. So she casually mentioned to me one day, during a lunch date I took her on, that Mom had tried to abort me, but it wasn’t successful. She was dead serious as she dug into her pastrami sandwich on rye.

That hurt. That thought never crossed my mind. I showed no response to that except , “Well, maybe, but it looks like I was meant to be here after all, doesn’t it?”

When I dropped her off after lunch, she told me she wanted to show me something upstairs at her place. Yeah. I couldn’t wait. You never really knew if she was going to sock it to you or possibly do something nice. The latter was few and far between.

I followed her up to her apartment, carrying some things I purchased for her during our outing. She was older now, with difficulty seeing, walking and doing most everything. Life, in general, had taken its toll.

Once inside her apartment, she searched for her photo book. She had all the old photos from when we were kids.

Opening the photo album on the table, she searched until she came to a black and white photo of a long time friend of the family, standing off in the distance in a field, with a hat on.

“Here’s a picture of your dad.”

“That’s Bud, Sister”

“I know, look, he has the same hairline.”

“ He’s got a hat on, Sister.”

“Yeah, but you can see, he’s got the same hairline as you.”

“Sister, I can’t really see his hairline, but if you are trying to make me feel bad, you’re not.”

“No, I just wanted you to see who your father was.”

“Sister, how do you know that’s my father?”

“Because daddy always said he didn’t think you were his child, and I think Bud was. “

“Well, I doubt any of this is true, but if it is, and Bud is my father, then at least I feel good that I don’t have alcoholism as a hereditary issue”

Foiled again.

I had plenty to throw around in my mind on the way home.

Growing up around sister was a lesson in itself. She was always throwing remarks my way to make me react.

In frustration, one day, as a younger child, I mentioned to mom how much what Sister did or said to me bothered me. Her advice was to ignore it, and not show my agitation, as that was the main reason for her comment to begin with. She was looking for me to react. So I followed that advice...for many years.

Thanksgiving at mom’s in Yonkers in ‘77, Benji and I flew in from California for a couple of days visit. We were all instructed to not contact Brother. Mom was pretty good at keeping Brother at bay. Sister joined us with her three children.

During the course of the day, she said something harsh again, and I didn’t react. I ignored it as usual. Mom mentioned something about how it might not be a nice thing to say, that it might hurt my feelings. Her response,” It doesn’t hurt Christine’s feelings. Since she was a kid I tried to make her angry and I couldn’t. No matter what I tried, she just never got angry.”

It was at that moment that I realized it had worked. All those years of torture, listening to her savage comments, and ignoring them, worked. What a lesson in life. Then it hits you that the person throwing the comments probably hurts more than you do, and it’s often too late to change anything.

Sister always made sure to remind me that she had a great relationship with Brother until I came along. Apparently she felt I stole his heart and she was kicked to the curb. How could I know whether that was true? So I asked mom and I asked Brother a while back, and they both denied that any close friendship ever existed between the two of them. Much to mom’s disappointment, Brother was always mean to Sister. Whatever the reason for that, she didn’t know. I have my own thoughts, and they will remain so.

Sister admitted something to me just a year or so before she passed about an image in her mind that haunted her dreams. She couldn’t understand the images she saw in her memory. I did. I believe that predators who hurt others in a family keep insults flying, in an attempt to bring them down and take away their self esteem and credibility, so they are never found out. So they are never to be believed.

For all the pain that Sister must have carried with her all her life, I feel remorseful. I wish I could have taken it away and made her happier. She was a beautiful young girl, and beautiful through her teens. People often remarked at her beauty and rightly so. Time took its toll, eventually, and like I have always maintained, people start looking on the outside like who they are on the inside, as they age. Remember when your mother used to tell you not to make faces at people because your face might freeze looking just like that ? Be careful what you feel in your heart.

Sister and I reached an understanding after a time. I couldn’t undo her pain, but I could understand it better. She said I had been protected all my life. The third in a family who got to witness abuse to such a degree, that I made sure not to set myself up for the same. I suppose that is somewhat accurate, but on the other hand, I watched the merciless abuse go on and it has scarred me, as well, for life.

96- Rumors

1951. When Mom and dad began building their dream house in Yonkers, they could have bought the entire block for $1,000, but decided on the corner lot.

There was a story going around that a murder had been committed somewhere on the property, and a body was discovered a while before they purchased it. I don’t know much more than that, but considering the whole area was nothing but woods at the time, it could have been likely.

Mom wondered, on some level, if the property was cursed, with that history attached to it. Who really knows. Roads weren’t yet paved and it was very much considered ‘country’ by most city people.

97-Superstition

Mom was pregnant with me during a very hot, humid, sticky month of July, and due in September sometime. She still performed all the tasks needed to get the house finished.

I understand there was an Italian woman living in the area, who stopped by to visit while Mom and Dad were finishing up the exterior of the house with stucco and bricks. Given that the very hot summer months had arrived, the house needed to be completed in the next three months and before the baby arrived.

Mom was very evidently pregnant and uncomfortable at this point. The woman asked how she was feeling and mom said she was anxious to ‘have this kid’ . She was two months away from her due date and more than ready.

The woman took a penny and slipped it down mom’s back, under her blouse. When the penny landed, she told mom she would have the baby within two days.

Less than two days later, things didn’t feel quite right, and while placing brick for the outside bedroom windowsill, she stopped and headed to the hospital. Within hours, I was born.

I was two months premature and not getting any oxygen, for whatever reason. I never found out all the details. Mom said I was black in color when she saw them take the baby and immediately whisk it away. They never weighed me. The birth certificate from the hospital says, “not weighed in’. There is no account of exactly what the issue was on the certificate or hospital records.

When mom requested to see me, the nurses told her she had to wait, that she couldn’t see me right away. It would be three days before they presented her with the baby she gave birth to. In those days, they never told mothers right away if their baby was stillborn, or if they didn’t ‘make it ‘. They waited sometime after, I imagine, when they thought the mother might be strong enough to hear news like that. Honestly, I don’t know when a good time would ever be.

Mom was sure her baby had died, and when they finally offered for her to see her baby, she declined. She felt they were showing her a baby that wasn’t hers. Having had worked in the neonatal area, mom knew something had gone wrong. A two month preemie had little chance of surviving in 1951. I imagine I wasn’t the best thing to grace their life at the time, either. Considering the lifestyle Mom was enduring and the fact the house wasn’t finished, surely put a strain on every part of her life when, in addition, she had to make sure to try and keep me alive against all odds. Jesus.

I was in an incubator for three weeks and eventually Mom gave in and had a look. I wonder how long it took for her to be sure I was hers. As I grew up, it became evident, for sure. We came to resemble each other so much it’s uncanny. Even today, when I look in the mirror, I see her looking back at me. I hear her in my voice, the same as everyone who cannot tell the difference between me or my daughters on the phone.

98-School Policy Differences

In North Carolina and California, school teachers could paddle their students. If they got out of hand, they got ‘the paddle’... a thick wood instrument in the shape of a handled cutting board with holes in it so air can pass through while pummeling the student. It looked like something made in wood shop.

In North Carolina, High school students drove the full sized yellow school busses that carried us all to school every day. If we didn’t answer the teachers with ‘Yes Ma’am ‘or ‘No Ma’am, ‘Yes Sir’ or ‘No Sir’, we were considered rude. You could get paddled for that.

It was all very different from everything I had ever experienced.

‘Youngins’ referred to children and ‘over yonder’ was a specific place..

Finishing sixth grade was interesting in North Carolina. I had just arrived from Nevada, but sounded like a New Yorker, I’m sure. …and, oddly, I got along with everyone pretty well. Kids asked questions about what it was like to live in Nevada and what Las Vegas was like. I had now traveled from New York to Nevada and back to North Carolina by car and could tell about everything I saw during my journey.

Aside from the obvious reason we had to travel to begin with, seeing all the parts of the country was an education in itself. The mountains, desert and blue sky of the West were extraordinary. How people talked and dressed was interesting.

Mom found the South frustrating. But she loved Nevada. I think she could have lived there for the remainder of her life, except that Brother would never have moved there. Life seemed simple and easy and pure in Nevada. We were like normal people, living the life of every other normal family. Except we weren’t. But there was still something oddly renewing and refreshing about it.

It amazed me how slow the terrain seemed to change as we drove. I expected it to change like turning a page in a book, but it didn’t. It was gradual. You could ride the entire day and see the same mountains and trees, it seemed. And then before you realized it, the scenery had changed without you even thinking about it. The Rocky Mountains were beautiful. The car always overheated on the mountains, so we had time to stop and feel the air in the Rockies.

The car also overheated in the desert. Stopping in the desert, in the middle of absolute emptiness was mind boggling. Silence is deafening. I understand that oh so well. You could be the only car on the road at any given time. No cell phones, no phone booths, no nothing. Antelopes showed up in the distance every now and then. Rabbits, scorpions and snakes lived in this climate. But not people.

Boulder City was an oasis, stuck between a man made lake, Lake Mead, and Las Vegas. Henderson was a pit stop between Boulder City and Las Vegas, and nothing but dry flat desert in between.

These days, it is one great big city from Lake Mead to Las Vegas. No more silver dollars, but instead, money cards for the slots. Electronics in every casino. No real arm on the ‘one armed bandits’. Casino and Hotel buffets are now expensive. No more freebies. Does anything ever change for the better? I think the Pioneer Club sign is still there, but I’m not sure if he still says ,”Howdy Partner!”

99- Sister Preferred North Carolina

Mom disliked the South to a great extent and my sister loved it. Being that she was now of age to make her own decisions, she decided to stay there and be part of a family she seemed to grow close to in the area.

Brother was released from the military after Mom went to Court for him, and he took off for New York directly after, promising to return the next week.

This never happened. He was never to return to North Carolina, and since we heard nothing from him, eventually we moved on when school ended for the year, lugging all of our possessions up to that date with us, and started off back North, where we settled in Henryville, Pa. for a while.

100- Summer 1963

Pennsylvania is a beautiful state, but work was scarce, and an opportunity came up that Mom couldn’t pass up. Besides, it looked like it could be a fun summer ahead.

Camp Lindonberry was a sleepover camp nestled in Henryville, in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. It had been around for sometime, and I believe is still going strong. Answering an Ad for summer help, Mom was hired to be the staff nurse at the camp for the summer of ‘63.

It was a few weeks before the kids would arrive, with sleeping bags, backpacks, and a lot of ‘what-have-you’s’, as they wouldn’t have seen their ‘camp’ friends in almost a year.

It was our job to get things in order before the start of camp, so we set up home in the infirmary, on cots. The infirmary had graffiti writing on the white walls from past patients who must have spent some time there practicing their drawing skills. One of the biggest pieces on the wall read ZIGGY WAS HERE! with drawings of Ziggy in various places. I would have liked to have met Ziggy.

We ate at the huge Mess Hall, which was in a separate building. The kitchen was loaded with what seemed to be gallon sized cans of vegetables and fruit. There was a walk-in refrigerator that could hold a whole cow or two. The Mess Hall, itself, was vast, and had a piano at one end, and long tables scattered throughout. While food was being prepared, I was clunking out nonsensical tunes on the piano. I always wanted to learn to play, but it wasn’t in the cards, especially now with our lifestyle. ( Side note: the Sterns had a nice white piano that I never heard any one play. When I plunked out a few notes one day, back in Yonkers, I was heavily reprimanded by the same parent that told me I had to share my crayons.. just sayin’)

I had never seen fruit cocktail come in such large cans. ‘Didn’t even know where you could possibly buy them. I realized this is what they have to use for the mass of campers that would soon be appearing.

I had never been to camp. Not day camp, and not sleepover camp. And I never cared to go. I was a little apprehensive about having to mingle with hundreds of kids I didn’t know. I realized they would all have their smaller groups that they formed years before, and I would be hard-put to fit in. But I was willing to give it a try this summer.

We agreed to paint the outside of each of the ‘barracks’ where the campers slept. Each day we slipped on our painting duds and took ladders, cans of paint and brushes and slapped what was probably the 10th layer of white paint on the outside of the old wooden cabins. We were able to do one per day, and then have the rest of the afternoon for ourselves.

I took a rowboat out on the lake quite often, staying close to our area, and wondered what I might find living along the banks. I saw what seemed to be the biggest bright green toad I had ever seen in my life, sitting at the water’s edge one day, croaking like a loose banjo string. I love the serenity of rowboats on a placid lake. It’s my favorite kind of boat, and my favorite kind of water to row in. I love the sound of oars coming out of the water, dripping from the end of the oar back into the water, and the sound of the oars in their oarlocks as you row. The feeling of the boat skim through the water as you propel yourself in the open air. All this is a beautiful experience for me. It’s probably the most serene feeling I know of. No other kind of boat really appeals to me.

I caught a catfish with chicken on a rope at the end of a pier, much like what I did in North Carolina with crabs. But this time, I lowered the string off the pier to the bottom of the lake and tied the rest to the old splintered wooden pier, and took off on my adventure around the lake in the rowboat. When I arrived back later on, there was a big ol’ catfish at the end of the rope, who had swallowed the chicken and became an official ‘Catfish on a rope’. I yanked the chicken from his gullet and let him go.

The greenery that surrounds a lake is incredible. I’ve always been amazed with how many hues there can be of the same basic color. And in places like The Pocanos, I think every type of greenery that exists, can be found within one square mile. A beautiful place for sure.

When it rained, we remained inside for the day, playing cards or checkers or reading. Occasionally we would venture out to see what stores might be offering in town. Our TV didn’t work so well in the mountains, so we were reduced to limited amusement.

I caught orange colored salamanders with bright red and black spots under the mossy rocks and created little terrariums for them in a fishbowl.

There was an Arts and Crafts cabin I wandered into one day, and found a mecca of ‘things’ to create. Forget those other privileged kids that would be coming in a few weeks; they wouldn’t appreciate this place as much as I did. I was sure.

The man who owned Camp Lindonberry was a big heavyset cigar smoking man who wore a satin or silk smoking jacket that he attempted to wrap around himself. He sat in a velour high back armchair, much like The Godfather, puffing away, talking alongside the cigar still stuck in his mouth. I didn’t care at all for him.

Rose was his wife, a small, slight woman who seemed that her whole purpose in life was to please. She would take us grocery shopping, having me ‘push’ the cart each time to make me feel included. Rose was a wonderful woman and always picked expensive meats for us. Money was no object for her and she enjoyed seeing people happy. I recall mom mentioning certain things were too expensive to buy and Rose would PooPoo it and throw it in the cart insisting,”He can afford it!” Mom would laugh and shake her head.

Ultimately Rose would ask me what I would pick and I was very shy to answer, so she would load the cart with all kinds of sweets and goodies she thought I would like. I loved Ruth.

Mom was promised a paycheck before the summer campers arrived, and after the cottages were painted, but nothing came. Not a cent. So we up and moved, landing in Allentown, Pa., The All American City. Still, no word from Brother.