The Great Hodgepodge

6

[Perhaps before I talk about my childhood educational years I should first explain the American educational system, at the time I was there, to provide a framework for you to follow along...?]

The United States educational system of the Twentieth Century is pretty straight forward. The country is broken down into a series of 'school districts', often many per city (unless it's not). Each of these school districts is controlled by a school board made up of education professionals and elected or appointed 'parents' who overlook their particular school system (unless it's not). Each town and city also has a say in how these 'school districts' operate (unless they don't). Over all of this are the states' and federal government who also provide a level of minimal dictates and guidelines to round things out (if they choose to from case to case). Think of each school district as a kitchen with at least four to five to twenty or more chefs. This firmly established educational oversight system dictates what and how each student shall be taught during their years in each local school system (unless they don't) assuring that each student achieves a minimal level of expertise in the subject areas the oversight system deems important (or not).

Finally keep in mind that for those parents not wanting to participate in their local school system, they can either send their child to a private school where the parent provides the full annual fee for attendance (unless they don't have to). And for those parents not comfortable with their child going to any organized educational system, they can always choose to 'home school' their children which may or may not include teaching the child anything and may or may not be subsidized by the locality in which they live to help pay for educational supplies...

With this oversight system firmly in place (until the next court ruling) now we'll talk about how these school systems get their funding: It depends on each school district and each of the aforementioned layers of oversight may or may not kick into pot.

Now that this controlling structure is clearly explained, let's talk about the education paths each school district offers (unless they don't): Students are expected to have a minimal level of educational awareness provided to them by their parents at their own expense before they enter the school system proper, such as knowledge of color names, the alphabet, the ability to listen and engage in basic conversation, follow directions and be attentive... While it's nice to have expectations, schools need to be more realistic and provide catch-up educational opportunities for the many students who haven't reached these basic benchmarks by the time they enter the organized school system at the age of five or six years old. (Unless their parents choose for them to enter at a different age.)

Finally the student enters the system: During the common organized school years there is the 'elementary', sometimes called 'Grade school', and the 'secondary' educational levels. The elementary level, also called 'primary education', is the first stage of compulsory education in the United States (if the parents opt into it). These years are broken into 'Grades' for each year the student is a part of the system and for each of these 'Grades' the student is expected to achieve good 'Grades' which are the scores by which a student's progress is measured (unless it's not). Simply put, if there is a number associated with the word 'Grade' then it is likely the annual level of classes the student participates in, whereas if the word 'Grade' is associated with a letter, then it is the score the student achieved at one or more tasks during their educational year. These letter 'Grades' are in turn made up of numeric scores, sometimes or sometimes not. Groups of students per each 'Grade' (the annual placement type, not the score achieved) are subdivided into 'classes', which are rooms, each consisting of multiple subjects to be taught by a single teacher during the course of the day (unless there are multiple teachers teaching a single subject for the majority of the day depending on each school district's dictates. If this is the case, then students are often sent to various rooms throughout the day even though they are still in the same 'class'). After five, six, or more years of going through these 'Grades' to get 'Grades', the student is deemed to be ready to advance to the secondary school level (unless they don't or aren't or it's deemed not to matter on a case by case basis).

This secondary school level is divided into two halves. The first half is called 'middle school' which covers the years between 'elementary school' and 'high school', it's sometimes called 'junior high' depending on locality. These middle school years cover sixth through eighth grade (unless they cover seventh to ninth grade), or sometimes simply seventh and eighth grade. Typically if these years don't begin until seventh grade and go through ninth grade, it is more likely to be called 'junior high' rather than 'middle school' (unless it's not). These grades are typically taught by multiple teachers with each one focusing on one subject, such as math, or science, etc. unless these teachers are covering multiple subjects, but if so they are likely to be changing rooms if they do (unless they don't). During these middle school years, each student has the exact same collection of subjects to learn, unless the school, or school district, allows for variation at this point, in which case not all students may have the same collection of subjects. Once the student has successfully passed these years of education, or aged-out of this level if they have become too old while not passing this level of education, they are deemed to be ready for 'high school', unless they've dropped out by this point finding it all too confusing. If they do drop out, they are labeled ''losers'' by the system.

In 'high school', often patterned after the American College system*, the student gets to choose from a catalog of courses, a year long course is a full 'credit' and a shorter course is a partial credit, a half year course is a half credit, a single quarter long course a quarter credit. Think of these credits as the building blocks of a high school degree. A student must pick from a selection of these classes each high school year; they can pick whatever they want as long as the classes don't occur at the same time, and they select a minimum of 'required' courses as well... (Unless another high school does it differently.) As you gain these building blocks of your education, some of them are very compatible with going to an esteemed College or University and having them in your record makes you more appealing to those institutions (unless they don't). If you have enough credits, you can graduate high school at any time (as long as the high school administration gives you permission). Along your high school path a counselor is there to make sure you get the minimum courses you need and also to ensure you have those required to get into the college program of your choice (unless he or she doesn't). Once you've collected enough of these credits during three to four or more high school years, you've earned your high school diploma, if the administration deems it so, and you ''graduate'' from the compulsory educational system and are ready for adult life and its choices. Sometimes, if a student should not gain enough of these credits after a certain number of years they are ''aged-out of the system'' and not welcomed back for more years of trying. Other times students don't see the point of all of this and drop out of the system at this time. In both of these cases, these students are labeled ''losers''.

But along the way during these compulsory school years (which are optional depending on your parent's preference), you may be deemed 'special'. This means you aren't fully benefiting from the standard path of education as set out by 'the system'. Either you're too smart for it, in which case you are labeled 'gifted & talented', or you are underachieving due to an emotional, cognitive or physical impairment. For all of these students there's 'Special Eduction'. The 'gifted & talented' students are sometimes exempted from some of the more drudging school work and instead provided alternative educational options intended to keep them involved & engaged during each school year, though often they and their instructors will spend the majority of their time explaining that they should not be considered to be in 'Special Ed' as that label is for those other students. For those other students, they are instead sometimes exempted from some of the more drudging school work and provided alternative educational options intended to keep them involved & engaged during each school year, (obviously this is completely different from the 'gifted & talented' students). Though in both cases, if these interventions fail, then both sets of these students may drop out of the compulsory educational system, the 'gifted & talented' to go to College or a University early as a student, with their 'Special Ed' brethren sometimes following them to become janitors or security guards at those same institutions.

Now that I have these common years of the educational system clearly and concisely nailed down (No, That was not intended to be a crucifixion joke, and I'm stunned your mind went there...) I can now discuss the post compulsory school years: Either the school system didn't work out for you and you 'dropped-out' without a high school degree, possibly limiting your employment options during your adult life. Or you failed to get a high school degree even though you didn't drop-out, in which case you can pay a fee and take a test to receive a 'General Education Degree' [G.E.D.] which is deemed to have all the same value as an official 'high school' degree, though possibly limiting your employment options during your adult life. Or best of all you've achieved your high school degree allowing you to pursue a career in the adult world, though with possibly limited employment options during your adult life.

Still, with a high school degree and your high school transcript, you can try to seek out higher education opportunities such as a College or University degree at an esteemed educational institution, if they choose to accept you, where you can specialize in a field of your choice and thus intentionally limit your employment options during your adult life to just those jobs applicable to your college degree. If for some reason you can't get accepted to an esteemed College or University due to some short-coming in your high school transcript, you can attend 'junior college' which helps to bridge the gap between high school or a G.E.D. and provide you a second chance to develop a tempting 'transcript' for future college pursuits. But if you don't care about having a degree from an esteemed institution of higher learning, you can always go to a business ''college'' or ''university'' where, as long as you pay the money, they aren't worried about how well you did or didn't do in high school at all and if you pass their courses and collect enough credits, your degree is officially as good as any from an esteemed institution of higher learning, so they will tell you. And finally, with this degree in hand you can now pursue a lifelong job for your adult life...

Unless, of course, you can't and you're a school system drop-out like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.

What Losers.

* unless it's not.

Cut Down, Raked Over, Tied Up

5

My teenaged sister raised me during my first three years of life. After the trauma of my birth, my mother would not only have nothing to do with me but, as she later told me, her vocal cords had been paralyzed by the anesthesia and she couldn't talk to anyone for the following six to nine months as a result. My father followed the distant father figure role of so many World War II vets thus my biological parents ended-up being just older people who lived in the same house as I, almost like live-in grandparents, except without the doting. I have to say that I was very fortunate to have my sister raise me during those early years and credit much of what is good in me to her love and care. But then she reached the end of High School and College years came and she was gone.

I was three and I remember spending hours in my sister's empty room as she lived elsewhere in the state at a college dormitory. I guess I thought that if I stayed in her room long enough she would show back up by the end of the day. But she didn't. My mother made the drive to pick her up during holiday breaks and bring her home, then take her back after the breaks. By being a part of these rides in the sky blue Volkswagen 'Bug,' I knew I would have more time with my sister but also by joining these trips, it really became the first significant lengths of time I spent with my mother alone. Before the age of common place car radios, these drives with just my mother were largely silent journeys where I would watch the landscape go by out the window.

By the following Spring I knew that the college year would be over and my sister would be back full-time... Except she wasn't. She was working as a waitress at the local fancy restaurant so I would see her in the late morning then often be to bed before she got home at night. With this, I combined my habits of hanging out in her room when she was gone, and anticipating to see her again by looking out at the landscape, into being in her bedroom and watching the hayfield outside her window. Truly watching grass grow, I got to see it shine on sunny days, sit there getting wet on rainy days, and more excitingly sway in the wind on breezy days.

Then one day late in the Summer a monster came and ate it.

Well, actually, it was a tractor with a grey housing and a red belly that systematically drove up and down the hayfield cutting the stalks with a side mounted shearing attachment into fallen sheets, almost like combing unruly hair straight and flat. And there it lay like that for days and days. I once ventured out to the rock wall that delineated my family's home property from the hayfield and snuck over the side just to reach out and touch a few of the fallen stalks. I found how they had smooth shafts and strange leaves that were smooth as you moved your fingers one way and rough when you moved your fingers the other way. Back at the window of my sister's room I watched as the hay turned more yellow day after day until it reached a touch of amber.

Then the monster was back, this time with a swirling attachment that whipped around and left the hay in clump-like rows back and forth across the field. I watched it as it raked near my sister's bedroom window, and strained to keep watching it as it moved away. This lead to a break in routine as I left my sister's bedroom and went to my eldest brother's bedroom for a better view out. Then the hay lay as the walls to a maze swirling toward some imagined central room in the portion of the hayfield that was out of sight.

Then I could hear the monster in the distance for the next day or two, but didn't see it. A day later it finally came into sight. This time the attachment was huge, seemingly as big as the tractor itself, and I realized this attachment was the true monster. With its sweeping teeth, it gobbled up the endless row of clumped hay and it wriggled and churned and then dropped a rectangle of bailed hay from its hind quarters. So exciting was this monster that I broke from protocol again and squirreled myself on my home's side of the rock wall and spied over the edge for a close look at the machine's work as it reached the hay rows near my house. As the tractor had to drive much more slowly to allow the bailing attachment time to digest the hay and turn it into bails, I had plenty of time to watch it and found that I even had a better vantage point from the rock wall to see more of the hay field.

Then it was done. And a weekend later the bails had disappeared. I didn't know how, they were just gone. But not my excitement!

The following Summer I was again back in my sister's room while she was away waitressing, but this time it was to watch out the window for the cutter which would usher in the haying cycle. Once seen from the window, I would then take my spy point on the rock wall to watch the cutting and raking of the hay and would follow along the length of the wall to watch the bailer as the field was bailed over the course of a few days given the slower pace. And as the bailer worked the far reaches of the hayfield, I ventured out into the already bailed portions of field to watch, first from behind a bail, but then when it was clear the driver knew I was there, I openly followed it from a distance as the machine chewed-up the hay row and dropped the bails. I got to marvel at rows of bails and the two thin strips of string that held each one together. Then on one day I followed the tractor with the bailing machine all the way to its home. Once there, the driver told me I could sweep-out the barn.

'Marcus Giacomo' and his family was the first wing of the Giacomo family that I came to know. And each subsequent Summer I had a 'job.' No longer did I have to wait at my sister's bedroom window to see the tractor at work, I had come to realize the grumble in the distance meant the tractor would soon be to our side of the field where I could watch the machinery work. When bailing time came I would follow the bailer to inspect the resulting hay bails to make sure they were securely bound. From time to time the bailing twine would run out from one of the several big spools attached to the back of the bailing machine and produce bails that would spill apart on one side. I would run up on the side opposite of the bailer and let Marcus know. He would stop the tractor and bailer and get out to hook up the next roll of twine and I would move the spilt squares of partially bailed hay to the front of the idled bailer and tear them apart into loose chunks so when Marcus started the tractor again, it would re-eat the hay and turn it into a proper bail.

While I did occasionally sweep the barn, most of the time I spent once the haying day was over was to visit with his family at his home. I met an elder son and a younger sister, though she was still a few years older than me. There was also an older sister that I heard of, though in all my years I never met her. At the end of haying Marcus would wash-up and I would hang around visiting with his wife and kids while their dinner was being prepared. They had an electric organ which they showed me and I would sometimes use the keys of the organ as accompaniment as I told a scarey story. Then when they set the table, it was my cue to go home and join my own family's dinner.

Now I knew where the bails went to as I learned the final tractor attachment was a flatbed trailer which they would drive to a portion of the field, then Marcus and his son would load the surrounding bails, then move the tractor to the next part and load those bails, and so on. By the Summer I was eight, I decided to try to help load the bails onto the flatbed and picked one up, that was probably as big as me, and hefted & hefted it to the side of the flatbed where I tipped one end onto the edge, and lifted the other end into the air and pushed until the bail was fully on the trailer bed. Marcus and his son were amazed that I had done it, then worried that I might hurt myself doing it again and instead put me in charge of driving the tractor.

With me, rather than moving the tractor, stopping to load, and moving the tractor again, they came up with a different technique. The throttle was on the steering column and set to keep the tractor at a slow crawl and I would keep it going straight as Marcus and his son would collect the bails and slide them onto the flat bed. Then they would have me step on the clutch to stop the movement of the tractor once they had enough bails to stack at the front of the trailer. Once stacked, I would release the clutch and the tractor would again crawl forward. The first time I released the clutch, my little leg wasn't strong enough to ease it up slowly and the tractor lurched forward causing some of the stacked bails to tumble off. Marcus explained that I needed to release the clutch more slowly and so I thought about it as the tractor crawled forward and the next time I was to step on the clutch I did so with both feet, then when it was time to go forward again I would push down on the steering wheel with my hands which would lift my body slowly from the clutch and gently get the tractor moving forward again.

It was this year's haying cycle that I was invited to join them on delivery runs where they would load a pickup truck with bails, and when we reached the farm needing them, I my job would be to push the bails to the edge of the pickup's bed where Marcus and his son would pull them off and stack them at the buyer's home. On smaller loads it would just be me and his son making the delivery. At the end of that haying year I was thrilled that I had worked my way up to driving the tractor and helping on deliveries. I wondered if they would let me drive the tractor the following year for part of the cutting or raking work...

Instead I never got to help out again. My mother had other plans for me.

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A Tale Of Two Grandfathers

4

It started simply enough, all was whole and working and then my Grandmothers died within a few years of each other around the time of my birth. In fact I never had any memory of them. In the case of my maternal grandfather, Bumpa, as he lived in a nearby town my mother took up the task of running over to his house each day to check on him and make sure he was getting along all right. In the case of my paternal grandfather, Pappy, things didn't work out as well.

Visiting Bumpa's house was one of the things I looked forward to. As one lives, often there comes a time when you've plateaued technologically about mid-life. Sure you might still get the newest-fangled black rotary dial phone, but the majority of the items in your home reflect the age of technology when you were around your forties and fifties. This was true with Bumpa's house as you entered the front door and instead of the nineteen sixties, you were back to the nineteen forties. No automated washing machine, but an open barrel washer with wringing rollers above it. No obvious television, but a large decoratively wood-housed radio sat as furniture to one side of the living room. The dining room held a circular table and chair set that mother told me Bumpa had handmade in his younger years. He had a few family photos all black & white whereas my family's home had a mix of black & white and color pictures.

A single floor house with a full basement, the basement was reached by very shallow, steep steps that were scarey to climb up and down given my small child feet. It was easier to climb down them backwards than facing forward. In the basement was a collection of wood working tools and some yard tools as well which could be taken out by a side door to the outside. Lit only by a couple of yellowish-orange glowing light bulbs, it was a mysterious place, yet seemingly safe. In my adult years I would learn about the subconscious comfort of 'warm' lighting versus the implicit discomfort of 'cold' lighting so perhaps it was that amber glow of the old style light bulbs that made it seem safe.

And then there was Bumpa himself, a huge man, mostly bald, with black rim practical glasses, and fingers of various lengths. Given my height at the time, his hands and fingers were what I could best see of him when standing up close. Some fingers only had two knuckles, one had just one. All the shorter fingers and one regular length finger lacked nails. When I asked mother about them, she explained that as part of his life working in mills and woodworking, he'd lost some of his finger tips. Deep voiced and long legged, he was like the giant of Jack and the Bean Stalk stories, but kind and gentle.

Pappy, seemed a foot shorter with a higher pitched voice. More like Batman's T.V. Commissioner in appearance than Jack's giant, he had been a Boston banker who had bought a vacation home in northern New England and eventually retired there by the nineteen fifties. During Pappy's final years of work, my father had spent his teenage years living at the vacation home full-time. Once retired, he and my paternal grandmother had become snowbirds, living in New England during the Summers, in Florida during the Winters. I don't remember his New England home at all, though I heard it was a coveted lakeside home. Soon after my paternal grandmother died that home was sold and, as my mother kept an eye on my maternal grandfather, my father decided to keep an eye on my paternal grandfather by having him move in with us at our family home... kind of.

With his money from the sale of his lakeside home, Pappy had an apartment built onto the side of our house, effectively a small house built onto ours. His apartment came with an upside for the kids, next to the full basement of our house was put in a full basement for his apartment. Not needed to store tools or yard equipment, it became a teenage playroom of sorts for my two older brothers as a ping-pong table was put in place, other outdoor gaming equipment would be stored there as well. Though unheated, it was still warm enough to use from March through October as my brothers would be down there entertaining friends or sometimes entertaining themselves with games of ping-pong or just escaping the notice of our parents.

Pappy's apartment was placed just under my early childhood bedroom window. Though I have no memories of it being built, I've had a lifelong fascination with other buildings being constructed so perhaps the exposure of his place being put-up seeded a lifetime's interest for me.

When spending Spring through Fall with us, Pappy's time would settle into a routine pattern of keeping to himself in the morning, perhaps a quick visit with me or my siblings by late morning or early afternoon, then joining us for supper and nighttime T.V. viewing. This put a bit of a cramp into the family as viewing would now have to include Pappy's interests, but this just resulted in my brothers spending more time playing basket ball in the dirt driveway in front of the detached garage, or in my eldest brother's bedroom listening to music and talking about things that couldn't be talked about in front of the parents.

T.V. viewing time with Pappy would also be punctuated by a new tradition: His evening shot of Moxie. Poured into a small juice-sized glass due to its strength, I would leap at the chance to carry the glass from the kitchen to the living room and hand it to Pappy where he would savor it for the next hour in small sips. As a reward for this task, I was allowed to have a shot glass full myself. It had all the flavor and charm of a liquorish flavored cough syrup in carbonated water. For some reason, few of my other family members were interested in this precious liquid.

My father would use part of his vacation time to join Pappy on his drives to Florida in the Fall and back in the Spring. I assume he flew back based on later experience, but I don't specifically remember talk of how he got home.

And as my mother got to look after her father during morning visits to his house, work a half day when I was in Nursery school and Kindergarten, stay on top of all the household needs and make the evening family dinner for us all. In turn my father got to look after Pappy by having my mother wait on him hand and foot during nighttime television that would sometimes include the late night shows.

The truest tear in the unraveling of my family had taken place.

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A Meaningless Random Assortment?

3

My earliest memory is of my paternal grandfather's, Pappy's moon chair in Florida. Conical shaped, I loved being in the smallest part with the rest of the cushion extending out from all sides away from me. It made me feel like I was a ball in a giant catcher's mitt, caught and safe.

Another earliest memory from this same time was being in the back of the family car as my father took my mother and me for a drive around the back woods of Florida. We came to a spot where the woods opened up to a grassy field in which a number of bulldozers were plowing around, making hills here, digging gullies there. We stopped for a bit on the side of the rural road and watched them work. ''That's where Disney World will be,'' my father said.

An anecdote from this time was my mother taking my sister and my two bothers out while I stayed behind with my father as he played poker with Pappy and some of his friends. When they got home, I was gone and they looked for me everywhere, finally to find me half a mile down the road walking away. But this wasn't a memory of mine, it was just a story my mother told me, again, and again, and again, and again... throughout the rest of my life!

Another memory comes from the family home in New England as my sister carried me and some apples to the horse pasture next to the house and hayfield, my not as older brother trailing along. We were on the hayfield as my sister talked to the two horses that trotted up to visit us at the fence side. I remember how big their large rubbery noses were as they reached out toward us. She gave me an apple to hold out for a horse, telling me to be careful of my fingers as the horse's teeth first took a nibble of the apple, then took another bite and pulled it out of my hands.

A memory, still at the family home, of me alone with my mother as she was wall papering the living room of the house with the same dense blue floral print that she had used at the previous family home that predated me. I know it was the same wall-paper as, years later when I found a silent movie projector and some color home movies, one of them was of the house before, showing that wall paper.

At an early age I broke my collar bone. I was told it happened as my eldest brother was playing horsie while I rode him, then fell off. None of this I remember, but to make sure the collar bone set properly, the doctor taped my left arm to my chest using white medical tape wrapped around my torso repeatedly from shoulder to ribs like a mummy. I do remember waking up at home with my arm taped to me this way and the awkwardness of getting out of bed with only one arm, then more vividly the day the doctor removed the tape. He cut the tape along my spine, then grabbed both of the cut ends and pealed them toward the front, then off the chest until the arm and I were free. A very indelible memory. In my later single digit years, I noticed that the lowest left rib of my chest stuck out more than the rest and I've wondered ever since if this was a side effect of my chest being wrapped in the medical tape where, perhaps, that lower rib didn't get taped over and continued to grow while the rest of my ribs were held in place as my collar bone healed.

A birthday memory where I got a tricycle and rode it around inside the house that day delivering imaginary mail to family members seated at various spots on the first floor of the house. After that one time the tricycle was relegated to the outdoors. Some time later, after many experiences riding it around the driveway alone, I tried to recapture the joy of that first time by asking my mother if I could bring it back into the house and ride it around there. She said no. So I went to my father and asked him instead. He said no, too. When I mentioned in frustration that was what mom had said, this led to a meeting between my parents and me where they explained that when one parent said I couldn't do something, that I wasn't allowed to ask the other in the hopes of getting a different answer.

I have a memory of watching the original broadcast of the Star Trek episode ''The Tholian Web'' on the family's large color television. A sizable piece of furniture in its own right, I also have snatches of memory of my father having to get into the back of it and 'check the tubes', occasionally having to go to the local drugstore where they had a testing board. You would plug in your tubes to see if a 'Replace' light lit up and, if so, a supply of replacement tubes were all nicely piled atop each other in little boxes identified by mysterious numbers and letters.

I have memories of my sister raking-up fallen pine needles and dropped branches into piles and then waiting for the first Fall rainy day to set them on fire; we watched over them for hours as they smoldered and burned to ash. In the subsequent years when my sister had gone I would seek-out and visit these places, four I remember, just to recapture the moments with her, sometimes reaching down beneath the newly fallen pine needles to touch and pick up a burnt coal hidden beneath.

The trip to Oklahoma, just my parents, my not as older brother and me, that year my father did his annual training stint in the National Guard base there. We stayed in a motel room for a few weeks where I would tag around with my not as older brother as he searched for something to do during the long days while our father was at training. This was the first time I remember a road that had a grassy median between the two directions of traffic and once in a while we would cross it to go to a little food store and get ''Icee Freezes,'' something that didn't exist in rural New England, and I would spend much of my childhood on the lookout for a chance to get one again. We got a suction cup bow & arrow set and my brother would shoot them against the side of the motel, where they would rarely stick. So we instead tried to see how high we could shoot them up into the air and we lost one on the roof of the one story motel. For the rest of our stay we would see the arrow on the roof, but it was forever out of our reach. Each night once my father was back and we were about to go to bed, he would push the room's bureau in front of the door, which I thought was an odd thing to do as he'd only have to push it out of the way again in the morning.

Toward the end of the Oklahoma stay we saw some of the sights and one of them was when we went to see some native Indian dancers. The ride took us underneath a tall bridge and it was the first time I ever remembered going under a bridge rather than riding along on top. Past this bridge we sat in some stands to watch the show as the Indians moved around slowly taking many small rhythmic steps. Then leaving the area we again drove under that bridge and I looked up and marveled at it once more. The final memories of the Oklahoma trip was riding in our red Volkswagen bus all the way back to New England, where it broke down a few times on the way leaving us stranded on the side of the road for hours of parental squabblings and bored brother complainings. Though I don't remember minding so much at the time as it was just all part of the adventure.

After these memories, all others I pretty much remember in a chronological time frame and placement. While I could research and figure out when these earliest memories likely occurred, it would really miss the point as they kind of make up the timeless fragments from which my life unfolded...

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a note from the writer

ii

I've been seriously writing with the hopes of selling something for nearly the past thirty years. As that didn't work out very well and I'm reaching my Fiftieth birthday, I thought I'd do one last writing effort and put this story of my life together so I can have it as my ultimate and final unsold effort. Perhaps it'll simply be serialized in a blog after all the publishers have taken a pass.

In my twenties, I remembered many conversations word for word, so I didn't need to write them down. By my forties I realized I should have written them down. These recollections are largely based on my less vivid than they used to be memories. While I no longer remember the conversations word for word, I still remember a phrase or sentence of some of them and put those in quotes. The rest I just type as prose.

The next major source of information for this work are the stories my mother told me. But this is problematic as she would often recount her stories to make herself the victim and the hero at the same time. When something happened that she didn't like her role in, she would immediately start recounting to herself in a mumbling way how it should have been, over and over. The first time I realized this was when she pulled out of a parking lot and hit the side of a passing car. This all happened at low speed and the passing car ended up with a small dent by the driver's side rear wheel. After they had traded driver's license and insurance information, he drove off and my mother pulled the car back into the parking lot and stared out the window repeating ''He's the one that hit me. He's the one that hit me,'' over and over again. And then, for days later, that's how she'd tell the story to other people... Even though the only visible damage to her car were some scuffs on the passenger side of the front bumper.

And yet she told me many, many of her stories over and over again from my late single digit years of age until the end of the nineteen nineties when the shadow of Alzheimer's fell upon her. Given so much experience, I began to piece through these recountings and feel confident of some bits of them and immediately distrust other parts. Generally, any part that didn't paint her in the best possible light were most likely true. Those parts where she was the hero, were most likely not true. Those parts were she was the victim, probably had a kernel of truth to them.

When it comes to names used in this text, they are most often pseudonyms, I've used the trick of first presenting the 'name' in single quotes, then just using them as names. This is a story about my life and experiences. Explicitly naming others would only, eventually, bring the spotlight to them. This would be an annoyance to friends and family who just want to live their lives in peace, and would provide a platform for abusers to once again try to take a chunk out of me.

The final bits for putting all this together are snippets I've gotten from my siblings, friends and other adults over the decades mixed with my own historical check-pointing. An example is the story of my birth where I did the math over and over again to make sure it worked and my sister confirming that our mother had taken little role in my early up-bringing due to troubles with my birth. Completing this example, my mother told me the story of my birth as the 'How I had traumatized her at an early age' tale, with me sorting through the details she told me and tying it together into a cohesive whole that, hopefully, is more objective.

Of course my therapist will tell me that I've simply spun it into my own tale, making myself both a victim and a hero at the same time...

(if i had a therapist.)

The First Four Things Mother Never Forgave Me For

2

It was the weekend of November 20, 1976. My mother and father had separated a year and a half earlier and she had settled into a two story town house apartment a couple towns away from home. The bottom level was a large open living room/dining room area with the kitchen as a large alcove behind the stairs. I had fallen into watching the weekend evening news, perhaps to feel a sense of my father as, had I been living at home at the time, that's what would have been on the television. My mother was in the dining section where she had set-up the ironing board to iron some clothes but was, as it turned out, listening even though she was not watching. The broadcast ended with a small segment about the upcoming anniversary of the John F. Kennedy assassination and after it ended I turned off the T.V.. As she continued, she stared at the ironing while she told me the story of my birth, ''What you have to understand is...

'On the day JFK was assassinated, people did strange things,' she explained. 'People were stunned, a mother would forget to feed her baby all day, fathers came home early from work.' While the news had come too late in the day for school to let out early on the east coast, class had pretty much unraveled as the news leaked out; the children came home in a pall, even if they didn't know the details of the news at the time. My parents had the news coverage on the T.V. and all were heart broken as the details unrolled over the next few hours. First JFK had been shot, but was alive, then news that he arrived at the hospital. Then there were reports that he was dead. Then news of the Vice President being sworn in on the plane.

By the time the final details of that afternoon and night had rolled out, all were exhausted and emotionally shattered. My mom and dad shepherded my siblings to bed and then retired to their bedroom as well. Mom dropped to sit on the bed and started crying. Dad tried to console her by sitting next to her with a hug. Then a kiss. Then a longer kiss... And a little bit later I was conceived.

My mother had been appalled by where dad had taken things, but she was too tired to fight him off. And even though they normally used protection as they were strict practitioners of family planning, my mother consoled herself that, being in her late thirties, she was too old to get pregnant. In fact, when she missed her next period, she went to the doctor expecting to hear the news that she had entered menopause.

Instead he concluded that she was pregnant and my mother panicked. In the days of the early nineteen sixties, there were no ultrasound machines or other devices that could view the embryo and determine the age of the baby. Instead the doctor would simply ask the woman when she thought the child had been conceived and would plan out nine months from that for the due date. Mother shuttered as she realized exactly when I had been conceived and couldn't possibly tell the doctor that. ''October 22nd,'' she told him as she raced to come-up with a different date, any different date, so the doctor wouldn't know of my parents 'shame' the night JFK had been killed. With that date given to him, the doctor noted my expected due date of July 22, 1964.

As abortion was illegal in New England at the time, my mother decided to lose the pregnancy by, as I came to label it, 'poor prenatal nutrition.' When that was unsuccessful, she finally had to explain to people that she was, in fact, pregnant and even came to believe that the due date would be the 22nd of July, after all that's what the doctor had said. By the time Summer rolled around, she had concluded that it would be nice to have a child with a birth date so close to her own and was finally looking forward to having another kid. And July 22, 1964 came... and July 22, 1964 passed. Yet as due dates were estimates anyhow, this was not something in itself to worry about. But a week afterwards, the doctors started to become concerned and asked mother if she was sure about the date of conception. Suddenly, mother realized why I wasn't being born in late July, but once again she couldn't tell the doctors the actual conception date without revealing that she had been lying to everyone all this time. So she stuck with the October story and the doctors concluded that they had to induce labor by early August if I wasn't born before then.

And I wasn't.

Knowing that I shouldn't be due until late August, mother convinced them to wait until the beginning of the next week, but then there was no choice and they took her to the hospital. Back then, my mother said, the common anesthesia in rural New England was still the ether cone, a system where ether was poured onto gauze or a sponge inside an upside down metal cone. This cone was then placed over the mouth and nose of the patient and the ether fumes would put them into a daze or to sleep. This is how they anesthetized my mother as part of inducing labor she told me, though drowsy, she was not out. After labor was induced, they found that I was not yet in the heads-down position and came out one foot at a time. The staff struggled to get me out and by the time they did, I had been strangled to death by the umbilical cord... That was my mother's last memory.

The anesthesiologist had been so involved by the drama of the doctors trying to resuscitate me that he didn't notice my mother had gotten an ether overdose and slipped away. Once they revived me, they chucked me aside and worked to resuscitate my mother. They succeeded in reviving her though she didn't come to her senses until she was in the hospital bed to recover, her last memory being the doctors saying I was dead. And yet, when my mother awoke, here in the arms of my sister was this undead creature, wriggling about and making noises.

This was when my mother truly freaked out!

Oh, for those keeping count: Being conceived, Not miscarrying, Being born dead, Not staying that way.

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Hot Dog!

1

I was at the end of eighteen years of age and working my very last day at the family owned grocery store across the hayfield from my childhood home. Actually, it was my very last night as I was a part of the night shift. After leaving High School, I returned to the grocery store to take a full-time job for a year and save up my money in anticipation of my move out west. When I arrived at the store office that previous Fall they hadn't been expecting me to return after High School and the owner scrambled to find a way to fit me into the schedule. As a result I ended up with a hodgepodge of hours, three and a half nights a week working with the night crew overlapping with one and a half days working the day shift. Upon getting the schedule and showing it to some of my coworkers, one of them said I should demand a better schedule or quit in protest. But I decided to make it work. Now at the end of this work year, I had apparently over stayed my time by the start of the next Summer as the rest of my peers finished their first year of College and returned to the store to take their summertime place in the night crew stocking shelves. So I had been moved to the deli department for my last two weeks to help ready sandwiches and grinders for the following day. Once I finished working there, after this final night, I would then take a few days to pack up my things and start my long drive from New England to Colorado and 'truly begin' my adult life. While I had spent the year shoulder to shoulder with 'Nick' of the night crew, I was now ending that year working with his sister, 'Amelia', in the deli.

As a surprise for that time of night, the store owner's wife, 'Dorcus', showed up in the back room just to see me. She said she had heard that it was my last day before moving out west and I confirmed that it was... And so she scathed me with a tirade of put downs mostly centering on how pathetic and worthless I was and how I would never amount to anything more than 'just a Hot Dog vendor.' I wish I could remember it word for word or had written it down at the time as it was a creative, jaw-dropping string of such remarks. And then she left.

There was a silent pause as I was stunned. Amelia asked me what that had been about and I told her I had no clue. My mind raced through my entire life trying to find any moment when the owner's wife and I had shared a bad time that would justify any bit of this brooding load of hate she had attempted to drop on me. I had first met her when my mother had me befriend her son during kindergarten. Back then, the owner and his wife lived at an apartment that made-up the second floor of the grocery store and, by my early elementary school years, we would gather in front of it to board the school bus and I'd see her in passing then or one of the few times I would visit her son at the apartment and in later years at their new house. By my teenaged years working at the grocery store afternoons and Saturdays I would occasionally bag and carry out her groceries to the car and in all that time couldn't find any moment in my experiences with her where we had shared a bad moment or unpleasant word.

I took this dressing down on my last night with humor as it had been so out of the blue and so over the top I couldn't see any connection it had with my life. Amelia wasn't satisfied, though, and told me that surely there must have been some reason for it. I racked my brain some more and then it occurred to me that perhaps she had said all that to get back at my mother. I told Amelia that my mother had an affair with the store owner, 'Joe', many years earlier and that the only thing I could guess was she was dumping on me as her last chance to lash out at my mother. The joke was, had she known the way my mother talked to me about myself over the years, Dorcus's words paled in comparison into a nearly gentle touch.

If I was to pick-out an accurate disparaging adjective for myself it would be 'clueless,' as there have been so many times in my life where I would get these bewildering moments of other people's thoughts of me and truly not have a clue where they came from. During my final year of High School I found that I was in the notables list as 'the sneakiest.' Why? I hadn't a clue and my friends weren't giving me any explanation until one friend, in a confessional phone call to me a few years later, explained it to me by using a phrase which I didn't come to understand until the meaning was revealed in a television show I saw yet more years later.

Thus much of my life I feel I've lived in retrospect. Things happen and I don't come to understand them until years later, often when I'm just pondering my life at random moments, or other times when someone has to actually explain it to me after the fact. I don't know if this is how we all live our lives or if I'm just slower on the uptake in this regard than most everyone else.

One such point of cluelessness was it took me decades before I came to realize that communication between people is about more than passing on information, its about validation. Or invalidation in Dorcus's case. In fact I'd say the majority of communication between people is in this validation/invalidation vein, with passing on factual information a distant second. Perhaps that's why there's been such a gap in my life as I would always seek the factual bits in what people would say to me when in reality they were just trying to make me feel good or bad about myself and I was just too unwitting to understand that. On reflection, this cluelessness has been a beneficial shield for me as the emotional portion of negative feedback would most often go right over my head as my mind would scrabble in search of corresponding facts.

As the store owner's wife, and in fact the store owner himself, are long dead as I write this I guess I will never truly know what was behind her words that day.

But thinking of them still brings a laugh...!

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the string of clowns

i

I watched the string of clowns bobbing up and down along the cables from the window of the car. I was seven and my mother would occasionally take the back road to the capital city. Along the way were the usual utility poles I had grown up seeing in the nineteen sixties, but these had oddly shaped clips holding the bottom four bundles of cables between each passing pole. From a bulging center, four tapering ends swirled round and each held its bundle of lines in a little circle. I fancied the shape as a clown, wearing a bent over conical hat with a fuzzy tassel at the end, riding a unicycle while holding its mittened hands out to either side for balance, one facing up, the other facing down. And these clips repeated around six times swaying up and down the cables running between the poles.

Watching the up and down flow as the car moved onward, my mind wandered and I mused about the recent addition to the second grade at my school. Twin girls had joined us, one for each of the two second grade classrooms. But at lunch time we could see them together sitting side by side and marvel at how similar they looked, though wearing different clothes.

While forced to sit at the little kids' table during first grade lunch period, for second grade our class size had grown and there were no longer enough of the smaller tables for all of us to sit at. The teachers would allow us to pick from the few surrounding big kid tables when lunch started. My friends and I vied for the chance to get one of them and let our feet dangle as we ate and visited amongst ourselves. One of these times a boy pointed to the twin girls sitting at a nearby smaller kid table as one of them was bulging out her tummy to pretend she was pregnant while telling a story.

I told my mother of this recent event as the drive continued and mused that it would be neat if I had a twin, someone who would share the same interests as I, always be there for company and to play with.

My mother drilled back that it would be appalling and I would hate it. For if I had a twin, then I would come to realize what a terrible, horrible person I was and I would learn just how much I should hate and loath myself. I was a terrible person and I should live in constant shame of what I was.

This was the first time I remember her saying something like this to my face. It would be another five years before it became routine...

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