The Car

74

About a year after my parents separated, my father bought a new car. An import compact station wagon, it was burnt orange in color and I immediately fell in love with it. Yes, I'm that kind of person who falls in love with import station wagons. It's freakish, I know. As the car was replacing my father's little import pick-up truck, he had a trailer hitch added to the new car so he could tow a trailer when he had to cart off the trash to the dump or get some building materials. This was around Nineteen Seventy-Six and six years later my father drove into the driveway with a brand new Subaru wagon. He had never been someone to trade in his cars, so the old wagon became consigned to the far end of the driveway loop.

Showing off his new prize, he explained that the old wagon had reached the point of needing more repairs than it was worth so he got the new car. He did mention in front of his girl friend Lois that, if I wanted, I could have the old wagon if I paid to have it repaired, and in fact he'd pay half the repair costs. Coming from him, this was a stunningly generous offer and left me suspicious that the old wagon was going to be a money pit. Still, I could look into it, couldn't I?

The ski area was just opening for the season when I took the car to an auto shop run by high school friends of my eldest brother. They had built a business working on imports and I thought they'd give me a straight deal. Other than the engine running a bit rough and the driver side seat being broken, they couldn't find anything significantly wrong with it. The driver side seat's back brace had been broken by my father in the past year and left the seat back a bit soft and wobbly when you leaned back on your left. I told them not to worry about that and they replaced the engine's head gasket and tuned the motor. Five hundred dollars later, the car was running just fine and I drove to the park to let dad know the total so he could plan out paying his half. But when I told him the amount, he became enraged and called me a liar and that the guys who had worked on the car didn't know what they were doing. My guess is, my father had been told the repair costs would be substantial in order to urge him into buying a new car, or the garage he took it to was filled with people who worked on American cars and simply didn't know what they were talking about when it came to estimating import car repairs. Either way, dad wasn't going to pay his half.

This just shows how his mind worked. If the repairs had been two thousand dollars, he would have paid half? But only needing to cough-up two hundred and fifty dollars was out of the question?

Needless to say, given how low the repairs costs were, I didn't miss the half that dad never paid and my driving the car for the next several months without problems proved that it had been repaired. During the spring college break, new friend Dave was in town and looking for something to do. I mentioned the broken car seat back while we were running around town and he said we could find a replacement at a junk yard. Really? Yes, all we had to do was go to a junk yard, find the general same make & model and unbolt the old seat and bolt in the replacement seat. This sounded like a great idea and he knew where a junk yard was. We then spent the next few hours driving to and walking around the back of the junk yard and climbing some of the stacks of cars looking for a matching seat. After all this time, we couldn't find an exact match, but found a seat from an earlier model and bought it, observing as we had the junk yard owner take it out. We brought it back to my house to install it only to find, once the original driver side seat was out that the bolt mounts were different on the replacement seat. The seat was also a different color anyhow, so Dave and I took it to the basement work area and debated what to do.

We decided to at least take the covers off both seats with the idea of exchanging them so the replacement seat would visually match the interior of the car. But once the metal frames and springs were exposed, we realized that the hinge where the back met the base were the same for both seats, so I thought why not just swap the seat backs thus keeping the original seat base which matched the bolt mounts. This actually worked, though when laying the seat backward, it tilted a bit, but that wasn't a big issue as I never put the back down anyhow. With the seat problem fixed, I decided this was the car I was going to drive to Colorado.

Then it came time for the car's annual inspection and it failed, labeling the car as not road worthy. They gave me a week to resolve the problems but I didn't have a clue. Talking about this with Nick at the grocery store as we worked, he explained that it was probably the rusted holes at the back of the car. In New England, salt was used to de-ice the roads during Winter and that resulting salt/slush mixture clung to the underside of the body and ate away the metal, leaving holes. He bet the fear was that exhaust fumes would come in through the holes and get the people inside. If we patched those holes, then it would pass inspection. Not only this, he knew how to patch these sorts of holes and offered to do it for free...! Holy Mother Of Luck! Following his directions, I got to his house in the afternoon before work hours and he showed me how to use Bondo putty and leftover fiberglass sack material to cover over the holes and seal them tightly. While not pretty, these patches did the trick and the car passed the second inspection.

Everything was ready for the trip to Colorado except for the little tiny detail of dad not giving me the title to the car. I realized I was having all this effort put into improving the wagon, but ultimately it was still his car. When I broached the subject with him, he'd just get a smile on his face and be very vague about when and if I'd get the title.

Now what do I do? I wondered.

As dad had made the claim in front of Lois that I could have the car if I got it repaired, I just decided to act as if it was my car and bought a radio/cassette deck to install for the trip. This would serve me well on the drive from New England to Colorado, I thought, and bought myself a component cassette deck for my eldest brother's leftover stereo system so I could tape my record albums ahead of time for the trip. Mother would later tell me that dad had called her up and laughed about me squandering all my money on car repairs and stereo upgrades that I would be arriving to Colorado penniless. In reality I had thirty-five hundred dollars saved up and mailed a check to her ahead of time to deposit into a new bank account under my name in Colorado. It was then that mother told me of the story, saying the last laugh was on dad. While I normally would have suspected the story might not be true, just mother making up another damning tale of dad, I didn't know of any other way she would have found out about me buying the tape deck for the stereo.

I left work for the last time and had five days to get ready and pack the car for the long drive. I was originally going to rent a trailer to hook to the back of the car, but once I tallied all my stuff, I realized I could squeeze it all into the back of the wagon and the passenger seat. As this blocked the interior rear view mirror, and this was before passenger side rear view mirrors were standard, I bought some temporary trailer mirrors which I could hook to the front fenders and give me a clear view to either side.

I say I could fit all my stuff, but in reality I had to leave the moped behind. It had served me well over the previous year and a half, but with the car I felt I wouldn't need it ever again. I gave it to my eldest brother as a going away present. I'm sure he soon listed it for sale or found someone else to give it to.

For some reason, during my last week, Dad and Lois lived at the family home rather than at her place. As I was leaving for Colorado a few weeks later than I normally would, was this simply a case that they always spent the Summers in the family house and I hadn't known it? Or was dad actually trying to get some more time with me in the last few days before I left?

With the car nearly packed except for my clothes, Lois came out and looked at the car and said it looked like I was ready to go. This was a perfect time to mention that I would be, but that dad still hadn't given me the title to the car. She was shocked as he had said he would in front of her. While I could have told her of dad's history of reneging on promises, I felt that would add bad blood and instead played it as a shake of the head and say ''I don't know why...'' The next morning, dad handed me the title when I came down stairs from bed, I assume Lois had a talk with him over the night and he couldn't think of an excuse as to why he was keeping it.

With it in hand, I went to the local Department of Motor Vehicles branch to register the car in my name. The problem was, you couldn't get a license plate for less than three months and the plate had to expire on one's birth month, so I had to buy a fourteen month license plate for the car, despite the fact that I was moving to Colorado in a handful of days.

whatever.

I closed out the bank account I had held with the bank in the apartment town for nine years and turned in my money machine card. I had come to love machine based banking and hoped I'd find it in Colorado when I got there. Of my remaining fifteen hundred dollars, I converted one thousand dollars of it into traveler's checks and kept five hundred as cash on hand for the trip. This was before the days of common place credit cards so using cash was normal for all of one's needs.

The car was packed and before I drove it over to Pete's house for my going away party, I noticed a nail head in the driver side back tire. As the tire was maintaining pressure, I decided it wouldn't be a problem and not to worry about it. After the party, I got home and said my goodbyes to Pappy as I expected to leave very early the next morning and he'd not be up yet. Pappy didn't seem to care either way; once my parents had separated he had labeled me as 'her kid' and had kept his distance from me ever since.

That last night at the house, I couldn't sleep. This would become a typical issue for me as I'd always have problems sleeping the night before a trip. On plane trips it didn't matter as I could sleep on the plane, but for the drive to Colorado, it would be an issue. Mother had bought an associate membership to the American Automobile Association for me and I had gotten the trip planned with them. Looking over the maps on the tank-like computer desk before settling to bed, I made a significant change to the first day. They had planned for me to go south out of New England and into Pennsylvania before heading west. But I instead decided to go straight west into New York state before settling down to Interstate 70 and lining up with the AAA planned route.

I think I finally fell asleep by two in the morning but was awake again by six. I debated whether to lay in bed for another few hours before I got on the road, but I didn't see the point in killing the time when I could be driving with it. Intending to quietly get out of the house and to the car, to my surprise dad and Lois were having none of that and chased me to the side of the car in their night wear to say goodbye to me, he shook my hand and she gave me a hug. It was probably the most positive moment I had with my father in seven years and it was a shame he couldn't have seemed this caring throughout my childhood.

Either way, my bag of clothes stuffed into the passenger seat, I started the car and was heading down the family home's driveway for the last time. Stopping at the end of the driveway, I took a moment despite there being no cross traffic, just to realize this was it.

Turing left and pulling onto the road, New England and my childhood were now left behind.

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Transitioning

49

As the sophomore school year rolled to a close, more and more of my friends reached sixteen. They got to take the High School's Drivers' Education class and then get their drivers licenses. With my birthday in August, I was out of luck and would have to wait until the next school year. But what really surprised me was how I felt when some of my friends, Pete and Van, picked-up jobs at the main grocery store: Annoyed. After all I was the one who had first started working at the chain, now featuring a third store, and yet my friends were the first ones to legally have a place there. Still, I stuffed the feelings down as I understood the reasons... That was until Van's year-younger brother got a job; his parents had filled-out some special paperwork to allow it.

That was that and as my bank account had been slowly dwindling over the past year and a half down to the low double digits, I went to the store owner, Joe, and asked what I would need to do to get a job at the main store once I returned from summer break. He said I could let them know once I was back. I thanked him and for the trip back to Colorado I pulled out the majority of my remaining bank funds from the money machine knowing I'd be replenishing it the following Fall.

I packed my one suitcase worth of clothes back into their one suitcase, left my winter jacket behind and flew out to Colorado. While my stuttering had faded a bit over my Sophomore year, it flared again when my mother picked me up at the airport and I had to struggle to say any words. As a result she did most of the talking. During the Spring, my not as older brother had joined the Air Force and left the state. She gave me an involved story as to why this happened, but my brother later told me it was a crock of bull. She, herself, had moved out of the one bedroom apartment and bought a mobile home to the extreme east side of town. It had a living area, combination dining room/kitchen space, two smaller bedrooms, a bathroom and the master bedroom at the back. I would have the second of the smaller bedrooms.

To my surprise, mother had actually kept some of my stuff while she lived at the single bedroom apartment as it was now set-up in my new room. This included the modular shelves, my chest of drawers from the first apartment, a couple of models I had made as a kid and the few record albums and record player I'd collected during the apartment years and our first Summer in Colorado. I guess these must have been in storage or something when she had told me she'd gotten rid of them. But gone was the custom mattress and box spring set that mother had ordered for me to entice me to stay in Colorado for my sophomore school year, it had been replaced by a standard sized twin bed. This bedroom also included the spare club chair from the living room set as it had at the first apartment, but in the eight foot by eight foot bedroom, it made everything feel a bit snug; yet unlike returning to the family home where my bedroom and its contents had been truly discarded, it was nice to come to a bedroom that looked somewhat familiar even if different.

Mother was tiffed that I had been wearing tattered clothes when I got off the plane and when I told her I was wearing the best clothes I had, she found that hard to believe and had me open up my suitcase. It was then she realized that I had lived the past year with just this one bag of clothes and she was pissed. She took me out to get some new clothes, but called up dad to inform him that, as the primary parent, it was his duty to supply me with clothes during the year, not hers. What she said did the trick as soon after I arrived back to New England at the end of Summer, dad took me straight out to fill up my closet with enough new clothes to last me the next few years...!

While I liked her new digs, there was a problem with its location for me, it was six miles away from the Radio Shack I went to. And as the mobile home was significantly further away from where my mother worked, she couldn't drive out and pick me up during her lunch hour to take me there. But I discovered that she had also saved the bicycle she had gotten me for my twelfth birthday so I came up with the plan where I would ride the bicycle to the Radio Shack around lunchtime, a mostly downhill trip, and then she would pick me up on her way home from work. She wasn't thrilled with the idea given her dislike of the traffic, but we found a series of side roads that would get me there and stopped at the nearby K Mart to buy a bicycle rack that could be temporarily mounted on the back of her car.

And thus I was once again doing my Monday-Wednesday-Friday visits to Ralph's Radio Shack to use the display computer. Though by this time, the second computer on display at a pillar was gone and the computer with the display desk at the window had been moved to the center of the store in its place. During my time away, this computer had been enhanced with the expansion interface, giving it an unimaginable thirty-two kilobytes of memory and two floppy drives. It still had the cassette player, which I needed for my stuff, and also had a printer, which I was discouraged from using as that cost money in ink and paper.

Ralph was happy to see me and let me continue using the store's computer and, given the slightly longer time I spent there on my days, I started to treat it like a job: I would work for a couple hours on my code and exploring the reaches of the upgraded machine, take a ten minute break by walking to the grocery store next door and buying a snack, then returning to the Radio Shack till the end of the day. He was impressed by the number of new games I'd come up with and coded while I was away and he even started using me as part of his sales pitches, noting that the computer was so simple given a kid could use it. Or sometimes customers would watch me for a bit without first talking to Ralph or his assistant, and ask me about the machine and then I'd do my own little sales job, pointing out the features the computer had and noting the various things it could be used for.

And of course, there was Jeff, who I once again got to visit, though this time it was more of a once every weekend affair given the longer distances mother would have to drive me. While Jeff was willing to occasionally pick me up for a visit, mother felt that was inappropriate for some reason and wanted to make sure I arrived at Jeff's house and was leaving Jeff's house with her own eyes. As the Radio Shack computer now had floppy drives and Jeff had floppy drives, it made sense for me to get my first pack of disks for the huge speed improvement it provided.

Jeff had continued to collect more games while I had been back in New England and two names stood out: Leo Christopherson and Big Five Software. Both of these had brought Trash-80 games to a whole new level by using 'machine code', the most elementary code level of the computer where the very bytes of a program directly controlled the computer, rather than having to be interactively translated from a text based code into actions by the computer. Big Five's games were pure machine code which made them this tantalizing mystery where I could see the results, but not how they were put together. Leo Christopherson's work was a hybrid of BASIC and machine code, where he hid the machine code bytes as strings of text embedded in the program, then fooled the program to execute the 'string of text' as if each was a small machine program. Using this method, he could code the guts of his games in easy BASIC, but then call the bits of machine code when something fast or flashy needed to be done.

Both of these coders also incorporated sound in the their games! They did this by tricking the computer's built in cassette interface from sending data to the recorder to instead send sound effects or beepy music. Radio Shack cassette recorders had this thing that if you pressed down the wrong combination of buttons, it would send any data sent to it out the built-in speaker. With other cassette recorders you would need to use an ear piece or external speaker plugged into the ear phone jack of the recorder to hear the sounds.

I knew I'd truly have to work my ass off to approach the level of these guys during the coming school year!

Oh, yes, what non-computer things did I do that Summer in Colorado...? I'm drawing a blank, but I'm sure my mother and I did something touristy once or twice and we probably made a trip up North to visit my sister. The complete absence of any non-computer memory of that Summer shows how consumed I had become with the burgeoning digital world.

When I arrived at Radio Shack for the start of August, I settled down to do my work. Ralph's assistant was there as well as some other older guy with a white beard, I assumed Ralph was away for the afternoon or just out for lunch. After most of the first hour, Ralph's assistant pulled me aside and quietly told me that Ralph had been transferred to a different store and the new guy in charge was incensed that I had come in and started using the computer as if I had always done that. While he and I knew I had been, the assistant couldn't tell that to the new manager without possibly getting Ralph into trouble, so I was to go and if asked I was supposed to say I hadn't known any better...

My days using the local Radio Shacks' computer was abruptly over. I grabbed my snack early and sat outside of the Radio Shack baking in the heat next to my bike as I expected I'd have to wait for the next three and a half hours until mother came to pick me up. Then about a half hour later I happened to notice Jeff's wife had come to get some stuff at the grocery store. I flagged her down and told her of the Radio Shack situation and asked if Jeff was home and I could join him? He wasn't but she said I could come over and use his computer for the rest of the afternoon. I thanked her and we figured out how to squeeze enough of my bicycle into the compact car's trunk so we could get to their place. Once there I called my mother to let her know of the change in plans and she agreed I could stay there and she'd pick me up once she was done with work.

Without being able to fill-up my weeks with Radio Shack visits, August became a bit of a boring month. So I decided to work on a problem that Pete had noted to me by the end of May and I had kept it in the back of my mind ever since: He noticed that my voice hadn't changed. As boys reached puberty, the first noticeable sign was often the cracking of their voice, and then some whiskers some months down the road once their new voice solidified. Yet, my voice hadn't changed at all and I realized this might be a problem.

As a kid I had automatically parroted voices that I had heard, such as from Sesame Street, cartoons, even music. I don't know why, but I just naturally did and my friends at school found it a fun trick. In the case of music, if I sang along, without thinking I would sing in my best approximation of the original vocalist's voice. As a result of years of exposure through my siblings records, I had gotten down a pretty good impression of each of the Beatles. I didn't realize this was a problem until we would have elementary school functions where we kids were to learn and perform some Christmas songs as a chorus. I assumed they would first play a recording of the song and then I'd try to mimic the voice but, no, they were common Christmas songs and we were to just sing them together using our own voices. Not having a clue how to sing sounding like myself, I decided to just move my lips during the first go through and listen to the combined sound of my classmates' voices. Then I had my anchor and for the rest of practice and the show itself, I sang in the best approximation of my combined classmates' voices as I could do.

So with free time on my hands during my last month of Summer, I thought I'd figure out what to do with my voice. Oddly enough, trying to come up with a voice on my own just sounded like a girl trying to sound like a guy. I thought this might actually be worse than staying with my own boyish voice. Then while watching a variety show, they had on the Oak Ridge boys and I noticed how, when doing the lowest notes, their bass singer would tuck his chin down to his chest. I played with doing this a few times and stumbled upon how it worked: Squeezing down like this constricted the throat and made the vocal chords looser, thus producing a deeper tone. While the sound worked, again, I'd look kinda suspicious if I spent all my time talking in school with my head tucked down. So I spent time with my head tucked and time with it not to feel how the throat felt different. With practice, I then learned how to tighten the muscles around my throat to loosen the chords rather than tucking in my chin. It worked! And I could now return to school with a deeper voice. I couldn't start doing it during my last days in Colorado as the change would be sudden and, again, suspicious. But I could start doing it once I got off the plane as people could imagine my voice had changed over the course of the summer months. Or so I thought.

For my other activity, I could only hand write so much code into notebooks before I'd get too back logged in trying it out. Jeff was nice enough to let me spend longer weekend days at his home trying out my code rather than him showing off other games he'd found. But I only ended up completing one final game before the month came to an end. When mother asked if there was anything special I'd like to do before I left back to New England, I told her I'd like to see Ralph again. We went to the original Radio Shack and I asked the assistant if he knew where Ralph had been transferred to? It was a store at the west side of town and mother was nice enough to drive me all the way there where I briefly said, ''Hello,'' to Ralph; I thanked him for the past years of letting me use the other Radio Shack's computer during my school breaks and then finished-up by showing off my latest creation, a cityscape game with buildings on fire and the helicopter you flew to drop water on it and stop the fire from spreading. With the necessary stops to fill-up with more water, eventually one could put it out if they were lucky. He was very impressed.

On the flight back, I sat next to a nice young woman who chatted with me during the flight to discover we were going to the same neck of New England, we talked of the places we knew in common and that I'd be working at the grocery store. As we approached Logan airport, we agreed to bump into each other in the coming weeks and visit. I never saw her again.

By the time the flight landed at Boston, I found I couldn't do it: The deeper voice that is. For some reason doing a voice for fun was okay, but the thought of intentionally trying to fool people into thinking I had a deeper voice weighed on my soul. Strapping down my breasts hadn't struck me in this way as, in truth, it was to retain my original appearance as much as possible when interacting with people. But using a 'put on' voice with the intent of misleading my friends that my voice had changed was just something I couldn't bring myself to do. So I got off the plane with the voice I had and I never regretted that decision.

No surprises greeted me when getting back to the house. I spent the traditional day-after at Jonathan's home showing off all the work I had done and other software I'd gotten, the only difference was he picked me up at my house, himself, which was the first time I'd ridden in a car with a friend driving. That weekend I went to the main grocery store to see Joe and let him know I was back. He asked how my mother was doing, and then said I could start the following Saturday, coming in a half hour before the store opened.

And thus began the, then, greatest year of my life.

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Release

44

Moving back to the family home, I guess I had expected, would be like returning to how things were fours years earlier before mother pulled me away to the apartment town. Here I was in the house I'd spent all but fours years of my life in, but my bedroom was gone. I was back in the same town that my friends had originally been in, yet the age of after-school-play-dates was over with. In fact my two closest friends at the time, Van and Luke didn't live within walking distance and, without public transportation existing or being old enough for a drivers license, the best I could do was call them on the phone and say ''Hi.''

My first day back from Colorado, after sleeping on the unmade bed, I searched the upstairs and found where the sheets were kept and some old blankets. I found a pillow as well, stuffed on the upper shelf of a closet. My father had gone off to work so I spent the morning learning how to use the washing machine. My eldest brother's bed, while made, hadn't been used for a long time and could use a stripping and washing, too.

With this under my belt, I called my friend Jonathan to let him know I was back in town. As the years had progressed, his father had curtailed his social time during the school year to a minimum to ensure his son would be fully devoted to his studies after school, so seeing Jonathan had become more of a summer time or school break opportunity. With my cassette of computer programs in hand and him having a Trash-80 computer of his own at home, I gave him a call to see if he was interested and available? He was and he and his mother were kind enough to pick me up. While we talked a bit of Colorado, we mostly focused on the games I brought and listening to the new music albums he'd gotten over the Summer. This would become an annual first day back from Colorado event for the next few years.

Getting home, I made the beds, mine and my eldest brother's. I found my old bedroom desk and chair had been moved to the white bedroom when my father had otherwise tossed everything else over the Summer, so I moved that into the new bedroom I was in. At first unsure where to put the desk, I came up with the idea of placing it in the closet. As I didn't need it for clothes, I had the suit case after all, I could use the closet as a study nook. The desk slipped nicely into the portion of the closet with the sloped ceiling and the closet had a window to the side allowing me to look out and ponder as need be. Over time, I found a spare plastic laundry basket in the basement. It was partially melted on one side, I assume from being left too closely to the baseboard heater at some point, but still it held clothes just fine so I replaced the suit case with the basket to hold my clothes.

That weekend I got a flash of memory and went to the closet of the white bedroom. At the foot of its closet was the door to the additional storage space. Opening it, I found the box I had squirreled away there as a kid. Inside were a number of childhood keepsakes from years earlier, such as a musket ball, which I had been keeping safe from my mother's hands. Now sorting through this box, much of it no longer held much meaning for me, but it was a connection to my past. So even though my bedroom and its contents were gone, I still had something which affirmed that this was my place and I belonged here.

Labor Day Monday, just before the start of school the next day, I noted to dad that mother had given me a dollar a day to pay for school lunch. While in reality she hadn't and I'd been using my own work money for that, I got the desired results of a five dollar bill each week. One of mother's oversights of the move to Colorado was that she didn't have me close-out my bank account as she had done with hers. As a result my saved money was still in New England except with one small wrinkle. The branch bank I had used was twenty miles away at the apartment town, and the main branch of the bank twenty-five miles away at the larger town nearby. My money was safe, but from me as well. One day in the Fall, I was walking along the shopping strip front toward the drug store and noticed a small room had been added just passed the hardware store windows, but before their outdoor garden lot. It had the logo of my bank, but just had a machine inside. It turned out it was an 'automated bank machine' and I called the main branch to find out about it, one of the early versions of the Automated Teller Machine we know today, they mailed me the paperwork to apply for a card to use it and then they sent me the bank machine card. I once again had access to my money.

So by Fall, I'd settled into my new life. My new bedroom was for sleeping, reading and school work, my eldest brother's room was for listening to music as it still had the original component stereo and some left behind albums, it also worked for reading as well. But unlike the years living with my mother at the apartment, my father neither spent hours each day telling me how terrible everyone else was, nor giving me the occasional hit, and Pappy kept mostly to himself as well. This allowed me time to emotionally decompress. Sometimes I'd sit at the desk in the closet and stare out the window, other times I'd just wander the woods and fields surrounding the house and soak in the peacefulness. As a stoke of luck, the ski area the previous year had added some cross country skiing trails and I had taken my skies and shoes to the park one weekend just before Spring to try them out. As a result, the skis and shoes were at the family home when my mother packed everything up for the move to Colorado, and so I had them with me and could use them in the surrounding woods and fields once the snows came.

Then one day in Fall, I'd gotten cocky while doing the laundry. During the two years of wearing the ACE bandage around my chest, it had never been washed. In fact, I doubt my mother had washed it after she had originally used it for her dislocated knee a decade earlier. I was unaware of hand washing at the time and I had only just figured out how to machine wash, so I thought I'd toss it in with the bedsheets one weekend. Once the machine was done, I found that the bandage had gotten caught up in the auger and stretched and pulled apart. Once the rest of the laundry was in the dryer, I struggled to get the ACE bandage debris out of the machine and finally did, but it was unsalvageable and I was panicked. I had become so used to using it to bind my beasts down and keep them from showing that I now had no clue how I could get another ACE bandage without being in public with my breasts bobbing through my shirt. It was a chicken and egg problem.

Then a solution occurred to me: In the room with the dryer was the family coat rack. As the years went on, once one coat was no longer being used by a family member it ended up forgotten on the coat rack with the new coat being added to the hanger next to it. As a result, over these many years, there was a selection of tattered coats just hanging there. In fact, as my mother hadn't packed-up my own winter coat for my return to New England, I'd have to pick one out of this rack once Winter came anyhow. I looked through what was there, most were torn or badly worn, but I found one light blue, down coat with its billowy surface that would fit me. Given its puffy shape, it hid what was underneath very well and, even though it was still Fall, I figured it was cold enough outside to get away with wearing it.

I walked to the drug store to pick up a new bandage and visit the money machine on the way there. Over the two years of using the ACE bandage around my breasts and not washing it, I'd developed quite the acne patch over my chest. I had become quite good at ignoring it in public as it itched, and it occurred to me that as I was picking up the bandage I could get some acne cream as well. When I got to the drug store counter, the clerk gave me an odd look. While some of it might have been due to me wearing the puffy winter jacket in Fall, I think it was mostly because of the handful of acne cream tubes I had brought to the counter along with the bandage. She looked at my face and didn't think I'd need so much; I froze as I didn't know what to say. As she was waiting for an answer, I stuttered out something about having some on hand for later.

At the time I was the only customer there and she left the cash register and had me follow her. I was sweating, not only from wearing the jacket as I followed her, but not knowing what this meant or what was going to happen. She brought me to a shelf and picked out a bottle of witch hazel and then snatched a pack of cotton balls on the way back. She explained that the witch hazel would work just as well and would cost pennies per bottle, rather than the dollars worth of acne cream tubes I had picked out. Transaction done, I returned home and coated my chest with the witch hazel and tried out the new clean ACE bandage. It also came with a little note of instructions talking about hand washing which I kept in mind for the future.

I also kept the puffy jacket in mind as well. During the first year of High School some students, rather than trying to stuff their winter coats into the little cubbyholes we had in place of lockers, would just wear the jackets all day in class, unzipped. When the snows came, I decided to be daring and do this too, but in reality this was so I could be out in public without the ACE bandage strapping me down. During the previous years with the bandage, I had kept to wearing tee shirts all year long to let the pent-up heat leave my body through my bare arms. Now with the jacket on, but no bandage, it really wasn't all that much hotter than what I'd been used to. I started to do this trick a couple times a week just for a change of pace.

Once December came, my father told me I'd be going back to see my mother for Christmas break. When I arrived in Colorado wearing the old puffy jacket, my mother was appalled and insisted I have a new one. I at first protested, but then agreed as long as I got to pick it out. I did and made sure it was another concealing jacket.

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Friends

30

New friends Brad and Mathew lived in the same town as the apartment. New friend Tim lived in my home town.

And then there was another new friend, a 'John'. He was a year older than me and lived a couple houses down from the apartment on the way to the back of the town hall where the school buses would meet. After the first couple of months making the morning walk to the bus waiting area, it was obvious seeing him take the same walk a bit before me or a bit after me. One day it was pretty much at the same time as me and so we walked together and chatted. He was a friendly boy also interested in a new friend near his home and that was that. He visited my apartment a few times, I visited his home a few times, but mostly we'd meet to roam the surrounding woods and chat.

Still, there were the old home town friends as well and I don't know if it was my mother or me that came up with the idea that, since I had the spare bed in my room and it was too far to drive for just an afternoon visit, how about an overnight visit much like I was doing overnight visits to dad's house during the week. It was thought best to do these for Friday/Saturday where there was no worry of homework that needed to be done and it provided most of the following day for visiting and play. Once this plan was settled on, the first person I invited was Pete. Despite the fact that he had become distant at school, I was hoping the overnighter would mend fences.

He accepted and rode the bus to the apartment town with me after school. The branch grocery store was open into the evening on Fridays and so my mother worked late and then had to spend sometime with Joe after closing hours for stuff, so we pretty much had unsupervised free time from the walk to the apartment after the bus reached town until around nine thirty when my mother would get home. Frozen pizzas and making popcorn kept us fed as we visited and maybe played a game or watched a little Friday night television.

Sure enough, Pete's and my friendship seemed to be back to where it was in the previous years as we spent the following day exploring the woods behind the apartment, seeing the tree house, chatting and playing some more games. Mother actually made lunch for his visit. Then we got to take him home around three in the afternoon so he'd be there in time for dinner. All and all the sort of reunion I had originally hoped for once school had started and I could see my old friends again... But then the following Monday at school, it was the same distant Pete as he had started out the school year, again I presumed to not jeopardize his new friendship with the upperclassman. And yet, he was back to being my old friend again the next time I invited him for an overnighter. I, myself, had to work hard to switch how I interacted with people when locations changed. I wondered if it was easy for Pete, it seemed to be.

Given the success of this, I invited Jonathan for an overnighter and it was equally successful, though he had remained friendly during school hours as well so I hadn't any doubts before hand. Things roughly worked out to three overnighters with Pete that school year and two with Jonathan. By the following years Jonathan would be less able to come as his father would progressively want him to spend more and more time on his studies at home, which included doing homework Friday evenings while Friday classes were still fresh in his mind. So with Jonathan down to once a year for an overnighter, I thought I'd invite new friend Tim. Also a success, he reciprocated by inviting me over to his home a few weekends later.

Unlike me having a spare bed in my room, Tim shared his bedroom with his younger brother, so he was displaced and I got his bed... Which included a plastic under sheet as his brother had problems wetting the bed. Oh, kinda icky, I thought but I toughed it out sleeping in the bed. The following morning his mother made a fried egg breakfast for us, though apparently his family liked the whites of their eggs runny. It kind of grossed me out and I just ate the edges around the eggs and avoided the less cooked centers. The toast was good and having juice for breakfast was a novelty for me. Then, unlike with my parents, or Pete's and Jonathan's parents even, Tim's parents didn't like us leaving the yard of his home, so roving the woods was out and this was especially disconcerting as my family home was just a quarter mile walk away and I would have loved the chance to have shown it to Tim. So we did a couple of things in his yard and played games in his home and visited, but by the time three o'clock came along I was ready to be back at the apartment and have more freedom. I wondered if this was how my other two friends had felt during their overnighters to my place, but I concluded 'not' as they came for return visits over the years. In the case of Tim, I was afraid of inviting him back for another overnighter for fear that I would get a return invite and wouldn't know how to turn it down without offending him or his parents. Tim and I would just remain school-time friends for the rest of Middle School and then just acquaintances by High School.

My routine during the school year, for those days I was at the apartment town, was to return on the bus and go to the store and work for two and a half hours until it closed at six and then get a ride home with my mother. She soon encouraged me to only work two hours and walk home as she and Joe had to 'count the money' after the store closed and she knew I'd be bored hanging around during that. So I would work at the store two hours, then grab myself a frozen pizza for dinner and walk to the apartment. On Fridays when I didn't have friends over, I would work three hours due to the store's extended hours, have Saturdays off as did my mother, then work Sunday mornings as, unlike the main store, the branch store was open then and made a fair deal of money as the town included quite a few working class single parents who couldn't shop the weekday hours.

For this work week, I'd get handed a five dollar bill and I was rich! This I cycled into school lunches so I could finally find out what my other school friends had been enjoying all these years, yet I still had plenty of money left over. There was a branch bank across the street from the branch grocery store and my mother would go there from time to time. So one day I took that week's five dollar bill and asked to open an account. I was eleven at the time and the bank personnel met this with some good humor. The answer was 'maybe,' but they'd have to check with my parents first. I told them that my mother worked across the street at the store and so they opened-up the phone book and called. Being just across the street, my mother came from the store and quickly signed some paperwork and left and I completed the rest and had my own bank account with passbook showing my account balance. This spent most of its time in my keepsake drawer until it was time to deposit more money or less often withdraw some money. This was my primary bank account until I left New England and moved to Colorado seven years later.

For my twelfth birthday, my mother wasn't able to assemble the family gathering as she had the previous year, so she recommended I think of some friends to invite, though they'd have to be local ones, not from the old home town given the driving time. Further, when my mother asked me what I wanted for my birthday, I just told her money. The previous Christmas had been a disappointment for me as my wish list of things to have got translated into generic knock-off versions of those things. By having cash in hand, I would be able to make sure I got exactly what I wanted. She gave me twenty dollars the next time we visited the capital city, and I pulled another ten of my own from the bank. While she spent her time visiting the various stores on main street, I studied the aisles of the toys-only store on the back side of the block. Seeing all the things I'd like to have, I did the math and figured-out the combination of games and toys that would perfectly use up my money. Mostly games as I knew I'd be able to have a group of friends over for my birthday the next Saturday. This was my most rewarding birthday haul and I insisted on cash from mother for all my future birthdays... It would just be two.

As an additional surprise, when my mother came to pick me up at the toy store, she wanted to go back to the department store on the corner as they had adult sized ten speed bicycles on sale and she was going to get me one! While I could only pick from the style on sale, I did get to pick the color and we then had the scarey time at the loading dock wondering if we could actually fit the box of the disassembled bike into her car or have to leave it behind. We finally got it in, though the trunk had to be tied partially closed. The next day I assembled the bike on my own and was riding it around the apartment parking lot that afternoon. Unlike last year's bike, this one fit me without having to raise the seat and handle bars high into the air. When my father picked me up for my midweek overnighter, my mother recommended I show him my new bike and enthusiastically I did, riding round the parking lot for him to see. My mother smirked as my father frowned, then he got to load the bike he had bought for me the year before into the back of his wagon so I could now have it at my old home.

For my birthday, I had settled on inviting over John from down the street and Brad and got them confirmed. I wanted to invite Beth over but, as I had friends of both sexes when I was younger, I had noticed an implied division of the sexes as I had reached my preteens. So instead I was thinking I'd invite Mathew... but when my father brought me back to the apartment the following day my mother said she'd seen two boys with their families at the store and invited them! Oh, ah... okay then. Mathew was now out as she said that would be too many kids. The good news, though, was I knew the other two boys from school and liked them so my brief fear, that one or both of the boys might be from the final quarter of Science class, was dispelled. When the day came and the boys arrived we pulled-out the pile of games I had gotten the weekend before only to find that they were for 'Up To Four Players.' We debated how to handle this as with the boys and me there were five. As we began to settle on the thought that one of us would sit out each game as we went through playing all of them, mother intervened and pointed out that, as a good host, I should let them play the games and I could be the banker: “After all, you'll have plenty of time to play the games later, yourself.” It turned out most of the games didn't need a banker and I got to spend from noon into early evening watching the four boys play through the various games I had gotten for my birthday. I discovered the games were not very fun when I later tried to play them alone...

The following year, when my mother asked if I wanted to have another group of boys over for my birthday, I said ''No.''

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