2000-04-07 - 21:52:13

April 8, 2000

As It Was

How a revolting rebel is made in three or more easy, disappointing lessons.

About the time I started school, Mom went back to work. I found out in later life that the six years she spent away from work had put the three of us behind financially. Dad was paying on the house, and handling everything financialy. Mom was doing more than her part too.

I had been taken across the alley to visit with the lady (?) who lived over there, never knowing that my education on dealing with life in the rough was about to begin at her house.

The first few days of school Mom walked me there and by the end of the week I was going to and from school by myself.

Then Mom told me that I needed to help the family out and then told me what was going to be. The master plan was, breakfast at home, go to school, come to the Mrs. house for lunch, go back to school and return to Mrs. house after school and stay with her until Mom and Dad got home from work.

That was about 1927, the market crash happened in 1929, so Mom and Dad had a little over two years to try to catch up. None of us really knew what would happen, but Dad knew a lot about the business world and the market set up and knew we were in for trouble. The scene was set for my early school years.

Things went along fairly

smooth for a while, and while Mom and Dad worked during the week, I would stay with Mrs after school.

On the the weekends Mom and Dad both had to work Mrs. and her husband would go out into the country and he would fish or gig frogs and she and I would sit in the shade, she would do some kind of needle work and I would play with my little lead toy cars.

The week day routine was pretty well established. Mrs. husband's job was secure as a Parks Department employee's could be and as near as I knew everything was what they called a year or so ago, "cool."

I tried to behave and probably did as well as boys my age and maybe better. What child of tender years can fathom the actions of the world and the damn grown ups ? I was still going to Mrs. house after school, as near as I knew my behavior

In later years I found out in a round about way that Mr. was into bootleg booze and gambling, often coming home in the morning in time to clean up and head out to work. There was no fighting between them that i could see, they were polite to each other in front of me. When the depression hit they were not having to tighten their belts up a notch. Maybe it

Gradually a shade of smoky brown seemed to come over my life and Mrs. started finding things wrong about me and my behavior. She never laid a hand on me, sometimes I wished she would have whaled me rather than treat me with disdain. I would go home to Mom and Dad with glee.

After a few months I tried to tell Mom and Dad that I wasn't being treated right. It got worse and worse for me across the alley after school. She would begin cussing me out right after I got there after school, and prevent me from doing the few things I had been allowed to do before. I never knew what to expect from her, only knowing that it would be unpleasant to terrible. I think she began to hate me, what was it ? Maybe early menopause, or she felt the strain of responsibility for a little boy, maybe Mrs. and Mr. were fighting after I went home in the evening. Whatever the cause, her treatment of me worsened. Lunch at her place was no longer pleasant or palatable, eaten under her unpleasant looks and gruff words. It seemed to me that the more I tried to behave well, the worse it got.

My complaints to Mom and Dad

got stronger and stronger and I think that due to the fact she wasn't beating on me Mom and Dad discounted this little boy's accounts of the treatment she dished out.

One illustration of how she operated, just before Valentines Day she opened a sack which contained Valentine cards to be assembled, and told me they were mine to take to school after they were put together. I guess she didn't like the way I delightedly said, "Thank you," because she opened the door of the round space heater in the front room and threw the whole works onto the coals and let them burn up, all the time trying to make me think I hadn't behaved right.

I don't know about other kids, but this kid knew he was not being treated fairly or given a half a chance. So, coming there after school evey day was about three or more hours of wondering what she was going to do next.

One thing I did learn in the time I spent there was how to string curse words out in an array that would have made a sailor blush. At times when I thought we were more or less at peace I would ask her the meaning of this or that word. She would want to know where on earth I had heard that word ? I would tell her that she had said that the other day when she was mad at me. Some times she would tell me and other times she would say I was too young to know. The words she wouldn't define were Webstered for me by my cousins when we visited over there. So I was well tutored in the lingua franca of the pre 1930's cuss words. I would lay in bed before sleep at night and think up novel ways to connect up the words I had been learning and pretend that I was cursing her out. My hard earned knowledge worked to my disadvantage because I hadn't learned to restrain myself when the dreaded Grown Ups were within hearing distance.

Maybe it did do me some good to not think of it because when I was catching hell from Mom and Dad for knowing all the swear words and the meanings thereof, I would tell them that is how Mrs. talked to me all the time, which she did.

Soon it became unbearable for me and I tried to get some clothes and boy treasures together and planned on running away. Of course, what did a nine or so year old boy know about running away ? Not a darn thing, I just knew that it would be better for me to be away from Mrs. I came home one evening from an errand Mpm amd Dad had sent me on and saw them looking at my trove, which was laid out in the open on the couch. Looking back I can see how gently Mom and Dad handled the whole thing.

Mom said, "I guess you are pretty fed up with Mrs. by now." I practically slobbered over my chin trying to emphasize just how much I resented her treatment of me.

We sat down at the table, we had cake, they had coffee and I had milk and Mom and Dad were trying to find out for themselves I guess if I could be responsible enough to be on my own after school until they got home. After a great deal of conversation, they put it to me that they would try it for a while and that if I couldn't handle it, I would have to go back to Mrs. The tortures of the damned sat heavily on my shoulders, because summer vacation time was soon to come and I just knew it wouldn't work for me to spend another summer being cussed out and punished. I did convince Mom and Dad to give it a try. So I handled it - - I had graduated into the ranks of the "Latch Key Kids." Man, that term hadn't even been invented yet I think but, "I were one." I was sworn to secrecy because and Dad were afraid of what would happen if it got out that I was home alone for several hours a day.

It was a difficult task for me to behave every minute by myself. It was as if I had been transformed into a pressure cooker with no safety valve, with the heat underneath rapidly increasing. I spent a good deal of time reading, and at the start had a simple chore or two to do, then coming to the point that lonliness overpowered my personal resources I would sit and try to think of new ways to arrange all the curse words I knew into one huge blast. It took a little time but it took up a space of time which quieted my lonliness.

After Mom and Dad got a Philco "cathedral" shaped table radio my afternoons were eased a bit by listening to "Jack Armstrong, The All American Boy." sponsered by, "Wheaties The Breakfast Of Champions, as a better than nothing activity I would listen to "Little Orphan Annie," sponsored by Ovaltine. Geez, I hated the taste of that stuff. So for two years or so, I managed to stay out of trouble. But as I got older I began to rebel. The kids I went to school with had at least a Mom at home to come home to. I needed someone who cared and who was interested in me and what was going on with me. So, to hell with secrecy, I would hurry and do my chores and go out to play with the kids. Having no sibling, I joined the kids, lagging behind in knowledge of how to get along with people my age. The ability to curse up a storm really got me into trouble then. The boys were eager and apt pupils and egged me on to greater displays of virtuoso exhibitions of crudity. There always seemed to be some one's sister in hearing range or an open window near where a mother was working.

Then came the time when no kids were allowed to play with that nasty Doug and my bad reputation hung on me like a tin can tied to a dog's tail - - - - - rattling along behind me following closely no matter how fast I ran.

What ever bad happened in our neighborhood, it was blamed on that nasty Doug. I took hell over the things the other boys were doing with their knowledge that it would be blamed on me and what really, really irked me was that

I did actually get older a year at a time and gathered a few friends who had similar interests, reading and stamp collecting in the cold weather and roaming the area on bikes and finding things to do peaceably. I had found a 25 caliber automatic pistol hidden away in our closet, we would go to the hardware store and buy ammo for it and go down to the clay pits and massacre tin cans and pop bottles. We wore that poor little Colt automatic out, target shooting. We did a lot of boy stuff, kite flying, playing on the playground.

Later on we would go down town and spend the day looking around, buying some candy, some cigarettes, chewing gum and sitting the balcony of one of the theaters watching a show acting out our idea of being grown up. Or trying to, deep down inside we knew we were just acting but it was good. We would fritter all our money away, spend the last on tickets to the show. Go into the theater in the shiny afternoon, and come out disoriented, after dark and walk all the way home getting there just before we would have caught the dickens.

Whatever happened in the neighborhood, the blame was laid on me. My friends would be my witnesses and I had been spending time in their houses and their Mom's would be happy to say that I had been with her boy at the crucial time. mIt helped.

Life became liveable and pleasant. Of course I would ditch school and get caught and would serve my time over and over.

During this time we were going through the Depression and things were tight. I was so tired of pinto beans and weenies and bologna that I could hardly shove it down my throat and my friends were in the same boat. Occasionally we would manage to kipe some potatos from a store and go down to the clay pits and roast them by a fire we had built and feel that we were really eating high.

We were back alley engineers making our toys from trash we found, we were ingenious for sure.

I started high school along with the kids I had been with all through elementary and junior high with. Also meeting kids who, although in our district had attended other elementary and junior high schools. I was in ROTC and enjoyed it, studies I tried to do right but rebellion was in my heart from the years before and about the only authority I could accept was that of my parents and the Army Sergeant who had the ROTC at our school.

I was barely making passing grades, but existing and enjoying life to a certain extent. Then came the tragedy for me. The house where I first became aware and knew from infancy and the friends I had, were left behind when we moved across town into a new house that Dad and Mom were buying. I hated it and couldn't make friends very fast. Finally I dropped out of High School and went to work. Years afterward, when four of my kids were stretched out in schooljust I got my High School GED.

So, Doug, what is your conclusion, then ? Well, many of my troubles were caused by my attitude and childish philosophy about things. I had been taught at home to work conscientiously and I never cheated on work at home.

I look back and see where I was, and what I could have done and kick my hypothetical butt. Then I think of the wonderful woman I would never have met and the fantastic kids we raised and never look back again until Sea Story time comes and I tell youngsters, "Oh, yeah, it was tough back then...............I had to walk five miles in hip deep snow to get to and from school - uphill both ways, with a lard sandwich for lunch and melted snow water to wash it down with . . . . . well, you know the malarkey we try to feed the boomers.

We did have a tough time of it, but in many ways maybe the young ones of today are facing heavier guns than we did, without being given the moral and ethical training we had. The end conclusion ? I wouldn't go back, and neither would I go ahead. I've served my time and am not ready to sign up for another hitch. How very lucky I am ! ! ! ! !

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