Twsc: A Shrouded Autobiography

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T W S C

A Shrouded Autobiography

iUniverse LLC

Early Years

At 12:31 a.m. on August 29, 1947, my body exited the womb. I don't know why in describing the yin and yang the male is described as being light, dry, and warm while the female is cold, dark, and damp. Light and dry may fit, but the womb is not cold, and I have always attributed women with warmth.

My first true memory was at thirty-two months old in the suburbs of Chicago under a neighbor's porch. Jan, who lived next to us, was playing by me. I was pushing a truck in the dirt, and the cute girl with blonde ringlets came up from behind and hit me in the back of the head with a hammer. I must have been stunned, because I didn't cry and walked home. The shock came from the pain and all the blood staining everything, including my socks. (The experience could have been a warning on how women can treat you.) My mother got me stitched up, and I was fine, but my first vivid memory was rather traumatic. I did get to pay her back couple of years later by accidentally sticking a fork in her eye at her fourth birthday party). I guess the early fifties had their violent moments.

When I was four (and my sister was two), we moved to Subby's Corner. My father had decided to go into business for himself and run a soda fountain and magazine store. It was a wondrous place with penny candy, a huge comic book rack (before plastic wrap, so I could read them all at nap time), and draft root beer in mugs that frosted over when you one out of cooler and poured the dark liquid from the large wooden barrel's faucet. There's nothing like getting up before everyone and pouring a frosty draft root beer and indulging in an Uncle Scrooge comic book. I also had my only childhood disease here: the chicken pox. My mother always tried to get me infected with mumps, measles, etc., because she heard that if you didn't get sick young, you could be seriously hurt by catching them in your later years. I was often placed with diseased children or made to get shots that would infect me, but my immune system was apparently uncooperative. I was never infected with any other childhood diseases. Mom would have been a total failure as Typhoid Mary.

I remember playing with fire out back (unfortunately, a recurring theme in my youth), and one of the neighborhood kids caught his coat on fire and was wildly running around and screaming. I instinctively tackled him and rolled him on the ground to extinguish the flames. Looking back, I think I did it more out of fear (being discovered by adults playing with fire) than by any heroic notion. He was okay, but like all kids, he couldn't take the pressure and cracked under parental questioning and ratted me out at the first opportunity. I was the neighborhood bad influence overnight, banned from interaction with decent children and grounded for life (more than a week). The local bullies started to pick on me, as my reputation with adults was sullied and my tattling could be construed as prevarication. I hated being tortured by older kids and vowed to end the reign of terror. I found a left- handed number four iron golf club in some bushes. I saw the main bully coming on his bike toward me (he was twice my age), so I whipped the club at him and caught him in the forehead. Down he went with his bike. That was the last time I was harassed.

One day I found a very small purse. It turned out to be a man's change purse with the crossed metal beads on top you had to pinch to get the metal frame to open. The side and bottom reminded me of a thin carpet. I wasn't strong enough to open it and retrieve my found fortune. I went into the store to have my father help me. Unfortunately, either my father knew the owner or he'd come by and asked about his purse. The man came to the store, and I sourly returned it to him. It had many dollar bills in it and lots of change. The man gave me a dime for my honesty and left. I couldn't believe I had let all that loot get away. My father was happy, so I let it go and quickly squandered the dime on five of those huge strips of paper with the candy buttons all over them. My father apparently wasn't a businessman, and we quickly lost the store. (Maybe he should have kept the purse.)

Puzzles and games were my passion, and I learned how to move all the chess pieces by kindergarten. I didn't go to nursery school, but Mom began to work as my father became incapacitated. We moved to the home of my father's mother's (Grandma Gene) in rural Illinois. It was on an acre of land and in the country, with lots of soy, corn, and a neighbor (Mrs. Anthony) who raised stinky chickens. She had a parakeet that she would "let" me hold to my objection. It would peck me unmercifully, and I disliked the bird with a passion.

Grandma Gene was a rare person. She collected rainwater for rinsing her hair and grew her own spices. Gene campaigned for Adlai Stevenson when everyone "Liked Ike" (Dwight D. Eisenhower). She loved her jokes about bums and cow pies and had a pump on the sink and a wringer washer. We had Mom's dog Sandy (purebred cocker spaniel) that was knocked up as soon as she got rid of a litter. She had more than a hundred puppies in her life. The neighbors on the other side had a half terrier mongrel with a gimp leg that would knock Sandy up—and anything else in the area that moved.

Grandpa Sam (Gene's husband) had worked for the IC railroad since he was fifteen. He liked pretending he was agrarian and had a huge garden and lots of fruit trees. We had peaches, apples, blackberries, strawberries, corn, cherries, rhubarb, raspberries, plums, tomatoes, beans, radishes, carrots, Concord grapes, peas, watermelons, peppers, rutabagas, turnips, and pumpkins, as well as an herb garden. We even grew our own mint for mint tea. Grandma Gene thought I was her personal experiment. She bought one of the early blenders and would take all the veggies and mix them together with a whole egg (shell included) and grind it up. Then, I would hear the fateful call of my name and I would have to drink from her cauldron. It was horrible tasting, despite the "goodness" of contents. I would convulse and almost regurgitate when the chunks slid down my throat. She did have some good philosophy, though. Grandma Gene never believed in coloring books. She felt plain paper and a pencil was much more creative instead of staying in the lines. (This is probably where I got most of my rebelliousness.) She also felt a toy was a waste of time and that pots and pans were better for little kids to bang and play with. She made me a horse with a broomstick, a paper bag face, and string reins; I rode it everywhere.

We got chicks one Easter as a present (no doubt from Mrs. Anthony next door), and as they grew, aggression set in. They loved to attack my sister's bare legs. (All girls wore dresses in those days.) She would run, and they would peck the heck out of her. I never ran, and they didn't bother me. Finally, even though they were technically pets, Grandma Gene wrung their necks and cooked them for dinner. I was told not to reiterate the incident to my sister. Well, how could I resist? I sat down at dinner and patiently waited until Lauren had taken several bites of the meal before bringing up the missing pets. I asked her if she'd seen her chicken, and she said no. I then spilled the beans that it was in front of her and she was consuming her "beloved" chicken. Well, true to form, she ran to the bathroom and began to throw up dinner, and I was summarily chastised for my despicable behavior.

I apparently didn't learn my lesson, because a short time later my grandfather on my mother's side (whom we called Poppy) killed some rabbits hunting. Grandma Gene cooked them as a hasenpfeffer stew and served it over toast. I, once again, patiently waited until she tasted the stew and then told her she was eating a bunny. And, once again, she ran to the bathroom to relinquish her supper. This time I was berated and confined to quarters. I doubt if the punishment convinced me not to get her to upchuck in the future, but I was never again afforded the opportunity to exercise the choice.

I went to morning kindergarten in one town, and then Mom picked me up at noon and took me to an elementary school for afternoon kindergarten. I do remember liking rest period; if I positioned my rug right, I could look up the girls' skirts to see what color underpants they had on. Girls were fascinating; some even made a fashion statement by wearing light terrycloth panties.

After that, I went to first and part of second grade at Flossmoor's Western Avenue Grade School. I remember one kid (Ronny) who put a tack on everyone's chair in first grade. I felt it in my rump, but it had caught the side of my Davy Crockett wallet and I didn't get the full penetration Ron had intended. Unfortunately for Ron, he had placed one on everyone's chair but his own, including the teacher's. He was quickly captured and paid the price by being shunned by fellow students and admonished by the teaching staff and parents. I always wondered what happened to him and how that one act ultimately affected his entire life.

Grandma Gene had an old-fashioned icebox and a pump at the sink (instead of a faucet). The water was awful and both tasted and smelled like sulfur. I remember being in the kitchen with shorts on in the summer, and the heavy icebox door came off and fell perfectly flat on the cat. (His milk saucer was under the icebox.) The impact splattered warm cat blood all over my exposed shins, and the cat never made a sound. The kitchen was a mess with blood strewn a few inches off the ground for an eight-foot circle. Grandma and I cleaned it up before Lauren saw it. We got a new, real refrigerator that made its own ice out of the accident.

In second grade, we moved away from Grandma Gene's home to our own home. I went to Willow School, and we were located on the border between walking and getting to ride the school bus.

My father was dying of melanoma in the lymph nodes, and in 1954, most doctors were pretty ignorant on what caused cancer. Dad would lie on our aqua couch in his white boxers and have a sun lamp glowing down on him. I remember him as energetic and the charismatic center of attention. Even people who knew him at the University of Illinois said he was the BMOC (big man on campus) in plays and at parties.

We went to the creek together and had a rope we could swing out on and take a cool summer dip. One time we were jumping fences and ended up in a field with one cow that turned out to be a bull. The bull had an attitude about his pasture and wanted to impress us with his ability to enforce it. My father sent me to the nearest fence and distracted the bull not unlike the clowns at a rodeo. The bull missed goring him by less than an arm's length. I remember him yelling "bullshit" at Mom behind the bedroom door. I remember him taking me on the Peter Wheat truck, which delivered fresh bread to homes daily. I didn't care about the bread, but Peter Wheat had a company comic book and that was a priority in my life. My father also took me door to door selling candy. He would make up bags of penny candy and hawk them in neighborhoods. He never held a job longer that six months, but he was a brilliant artist. He could sketch hands and feet. My favorite piece he did was an oil painting of Plains Indians attacking buffalo with spears.

My father died at the age of thirty-one in December 1954 of cancer of the lymph system and other parts unknown. Mom didn't want to spoil Christmas, so she foolishly didn't tell my sister (age five) and me (seven) he had died. I developed a fantasy that he was a G-man (government man equivalent to CIA today) and on a secret mission. I didn't grieve, and I didn't accept. Actual closure was brought about two years later.

My mom's father (Grandpa Poppy) took over somewhat in the interim. We saw him more than usual, but the father figure was gone. Mom gave me the classic line that strikes fear in to the hearts of psychotherapists everywhere: "You're the man of the house now." My father hadn't bothered with life insurance, so we were destitute and just as poor as Tiny Tim was.

I went into the Flossmoor Pharmacy and stole a pack of baseball cards with the bubble gum inside. When Mom saw me, she asked where I had gotten them, because she knew I didn't have any money. I confessed, and she was severely disappointed. She gave me a nickel and made me go to the manager, tell my mistake, and pay for the cards. I was humiliated, but it was a lesson that served me well for my own daughter thirty-seven years later.

We had a girl across the street a year older than me named Christine. It was a large Catholic family with five or six kids. Christine (like me) was the oldest. We had a shed out back and would play many games, but she liked the one where she was the queen and we had to do what she said if she captured us. Back then, boys thought of girls as yucky, but I wasn't quite sure. She caught me mostly because I was curious and then took me into the shed where we sat down. I had to sit with her as she "punished me" with a long kiss that made my socks roll down. I was hounded by my peers and jeered about being kissed, but after that day, I never succumbed to any peer pressure. My next kiss was from Barbara who pretended to be a horse at recess and had a ponytail. She would chase and kick me, but if I could chase and catch her, then I got a kiss. Boy was I sorry when she moved away.

My sister, Lauren, became a problem for my freedom. We fought like any kids, and we cared about each other and had a common bond in our poverty and loss. I remember her pulling on a pair of my corduroy pants, and my loose eyetooth got caught during the ensuing tug-of-war. She ripped my tooth right out of my mouth. When she started school, she became a horrible tattletale about everything. I learned from a Sgt. Rock comic book that she had the same birthday as Adolf Hitler. It turned out she was a little Gestapo agent for Mom.

One day I was going to take a bath but had left my submarine in the sandbox outside. The sub was one of those I got off a cereal box, and it worked by putting baking soda in it to make it rise and fall. I ran outside naked, procured the submarine, raced naked back inside, and got in the tub. She immediately ratted on me to Mom. I knew I had to take corrective action and straighten out my sister for both of us. If we fought, Lauren only had her legs for strength, so she would run to her room, jump on her bed, get her legs up, and begin kicking while on her back. Once I got through her legs, she was finished.

Mom's standard punishment for hitting my sister was banishment to my room for an unspecified period of time, which varied depending on the severity of the bashing, my sister's length of sustained crying, and Mom's mood when disturbed. I put milk and cookies under my bed, hooked my AM crystal radio to the gutter, and stashed my cherished collection of comic books. I then told my sister I was going to hit her in the stomach for tattling on me, and if she told on me, I would get her again later. She ran to her room and flopped on the bed and began kicking. I quickly followed, swept her legs to the side, and punched her in the gut. She doubled over and began crying. Once she got a good volume of tears and sound up, she raced to Mom with the terrifying tale. I was sent to my room, and I stayed for several hours listening, eating, drinking, and reading. I then went to Mom and apologized to her and Lauren in front of each other and went to the back of the house.

The next time I saw my sister alone I told her she was toast and promised I would get her for tattling on me for punishing her. She immediately ran to Mom and told on me. I, of course, denied any complicity of the terrorizing of her stoolie (my sister). I did that several more times, and my sister would tell but again had no evidence. Mom was losing interest in tales being tattled. Then I reset my room with goodies and comic books. I told her she was toast and had to pay the piper, and if she told, I promised I would get her worse the next time. She ran to her room; I swept her legs and punched her twice in the stomach. She doubled up and took even more time for a stellar grief performance for Mom and ran off. I was again sequestered to my quarters where I consumed my libation and foraged via comic relief.

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Excerpted from T W S C by Tenacity. Copyright © 2014 Tenacity. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse LLC.
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