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| Uncle Frank & Aunt Helen
Uncle Frank dressed like a character from a 1930’s movie played by Basil Rathbone. He wore high waisted pleated trousers with shirts with plackets or pleats sewn into the front. He had brown leather basket weave shoes and a shiny gold wristwatch. His hair was Brill Creamed. He always had a cavalier casual elegance. Uncle Frank was classically handsome, tall and fit looking until he died in his late 80’s. Aunt Helen thought she was classy. In the old photographs she is what was referred to as a ‘handsome woman.’ She was big bosomed with the illusion of slender hips created by a tight girdle set in place by a vacuum sealer. She always dressed to kill. She was proud of her position as Uncle Frank’s wife and she played it to the hilt. They never had any children and they never talked about why. It was rumored that once they took in a foster child but were appalled by the expense of keeping him. I think they thought he would be a nice decorative addition to their beautiful home. Something to sit in a corner and read an interesting looking book when people came to call. He would be someone to call them momma and Poppa with a European accent to match the French provincial furniture. This was a couple out of touch with reality. They could not understand why my father, Helen’s brother could not make ends meet. The cost of four girls set against the cost of no girls or boys did not compute in their inability to empathize. Marsha In the seventh grade I had a friend who was a bit too physically mature to be a seventh grader. There are always one or two kids who develop early… boys who have facial hair… sometimes full mustaches by the time pubic hair is just budding on everyone else. At 12 years old Marsha had the full-blown body of a woman. Next to the rest of us she looked like the teacher. She no longer fit into kids clothing so she wore adult clothes… junior sportswear was not an option in 1967. In those days, the prevalent theory among fashion designers was that young ladies wanted to look like their mothers as soon as possible. You jumped from size 16 girls right into size 8 women’s. Kid’s clothes were actually made to look like they belonged on children. We did not have fashionable mini-leather jackets or Baby Gap with outfits in size 6 that looked like what Cher might wear on The Tonight Show. |
| February 14, 1964 My father died on February 14, 1964 at 48 years old. He had a heart attach in his sleep. I was eight years old. Normally, my father was an early riser… he had to be to get into our one bathroom ahead of his wife, two teenage daughters and one straggler eight-year-old girl. I am not exactly sure what time all the commotion began. Sue had taken the bus to Bishop McMahon High School where she worked as a secretary. She was already at her desk when Joan called and told her to come home. I slept alone in those days after my sister Marie was married and Sue moved into the bedroom off the parlor with Joan. It was normally a problem waking me up. I wanted to hunker down in my blankets on school mornings and feign sickness so I could stay home. However, this morning was special, it was Valentine’s Day. There would be a party at school and I had carefully selected cards from my variety pack for each classmate and each friend on my street. I had spent hours deciding which boy or girl would get the turtle with the verse “Don’t hide your head. Be mine.” Or the cat that proclaimed, “You’re purrrfect. Be my Valentine.” I was specific as I visualized each row of classmates one by one and deliberated which card fit each situation, relationship or enmity. Yes, even the unloved received a valentine but one with an appropriate verse and image. A skunk with “You’re a little stinker.” Or an elephant with “I will never forget you.” Both were innocuous and honest enough. Every Valentine’s Day before school I would deliver my cards to my street friends. I would put on my school uniform; knee socks that had to be tugged at constantly to remain at the knee, crisp white blouse with a Peter Pan collar and forest green jumper with an insignia “SAS” for St. Agnes School embroidered in gold letters on the placket where my left breast would someday be. I would dress for outdoors in boots and a ski jacket with my Mary Janes in a shoe bag and my books in a plaid book bag held at my side. When I woke up on this Valentine’s Day the world was a different place. My mother was hysterical and strange as she sat on the dinning room chair near the window. Joan seemed to run from room to room making phone calls and trying to figure out in her 19 year old mind what to do next because my mother was useless. I crawled out of my bed baffled by the commotion. My mother did not see me. My sister did not see me. It was like I was invisible. I walked into my parent’s bedroom off the kitchen and saw my father in bed. He was on his back and perfectly still. He was the wrong color. I had heard the others saying that daddy was dead. I stood next to the body and touched his sallow hairy arm… it was hard and cold. The skin moved over the hard muscle like the rubber skin on one of my dolls over her plastic shell. I touched his face and it felt the same. I was unmoved and simply curious. I learned not to love my father because he did not seem to love me. I realized at that moment that I was free of him. He no longer could tell me what to do or with whom to be friends. I felt relieved that I would not have to listen for him coming home on Friday nights and run to bed because I was supposed to be asleep at 7:30. The Flintstones came on at 7:30. I realized all of this in the few minutes I stood by his bed randomly touching his cold rubbery skin. I turned out of the room and told my mother and sister that I had to go to school. They told me sadly that I would not be going that day because daddy had died. They must have thought I could not reason this out for myself. They never thought much about the comprehension of an eight-year-old child when in reality I understood it all pretty well. I told them I wanted to go to school. I had put so much effort into this one meaningful day. They pitied me, the fatherless child who did not have the slightest inclination what this death would ultimately mean to me. However, in my eight-year-old mind I had analyzed that life would be better for me now without Chet around to boss me. I knew nothing about finances or the psychological distress of growing up with out a male role model but I do not think that occurred to my family either. They must have assumed I would miss my father. I never did, although I did miss the idealized notion of a father in my life. In the chaos that continued I went to my room and took out my corduroy and flannel Saturday clothes. I dressed in hat and scarf and took my valentines in a mittened hand. Without notice I walked out the opened front door where the paramedics had come in the house too late to pump life back into the empty shell of my father. I walked down the stairs still invisible to my family. I must have been a curious sight to all the neighbors wrapped in robes standing on their porches watching the flashing lights of the ambulance and wondering what calamity befell the House of Wachowiak. They must have thought I was in shock as they watched me walk down the street slipping small white envelopes into mailboxes or ringing doorbells to hand the carefully selected message to each friend. Did anyone ask me what had happened at my house? I do not remember if I answered, “My father died.” How strange I must have seemed to all those adults who could not imagine the inner workings of a child’s mind disappointed that Valentine’s Day was spoiled. I was only mourning the loss of a school party where I would open my own secret messages from friends and foe… being as careful to analyze their meaning as I was to fit each card to each recipient. My family never knew I delivered my valentines. I slipped back into my own living room where more adults now gathered. The paramedics worked on my Aunt Bertha who had suffered a heart attack of her own sparked by the great loss of her young brother. I have no memory of the rest of that day. My father’s body was laid out at Knab Funeral Parlor on Lovejoy and Davey. My only memories of those few days were of playing cards in the backroom with cousins. We could not run though the mourners or play near the body. Our parents never thought to leave us home. We were family and attending death was not optional. This was how we learned from experience that life ends in a parade of mourners walking past your body to say goodbye. It was necessary to view the shell to remind them that life was short and to help them to take a fresh look at their own lives and start again. I was too young for all that but I did learn how many friends my father had. These were people I may have never seen, people who felt the loss of Chester Wachowiak more profoundly than I. I realized that his was a valuable life that touched many in some adult way I could not yet understand. I felt slightly cheated that there was something I had missed or something Chet did not let me see. The day of the funeral I dressed in my Sunday clothes including one of the brilliant hats my mother bought for me at Sattler’s out of our meager clothing allowance. My hair was cut short with bangs like Moe from the Three Stooges. I still had not shed a tear over my father’s death. For the most part, I was unmoved. I walked into St. Agnes church with its mural of God the father on the vaulted ceiling and the huge white alter looming up the isle. I sat in front with my mother and sisters as the priest laid my father’s soul to rest and allayed the fears of death by painting a beautiful picture of Heaven. It was just another mass to me. I attended mass six days per week throughout my primary education. This time I sat with my family like we did on Sundays. My father almost always went to early mass without us. I did not really notice his absence. When mass was over the family was led out of church first. While walking down the carpeted isle past the heavy oak pews I realized that my third grade class was sitting all together in the back. I saw their own anxiety on their faces that a thing like this could happen. I saw them project their feelings of love and concern for their own fathers. I felt their pity and maybe even some genuine sadness for me. I burst into tears for the first time. Not for my father but for the overwhelming realization that these children cared about me. I knew it was mandatory and that they came supervised as a class. They had no choice but in their faces I saw my first real empathy and witnessed how sorrow can pull people together. I was not a popular kid. I had a few friends but generally I was looked upon as an outsider. I had a bizarre imagination that I would freely share because I was not aware that other children did not give themselves to fancy the way I did. My teachers rolled their eyes at me or put me in the back of the room or the front so they could keep me under their scrutiny. I was labeled as a daydreamer and at St. Agnes that was not a compliment. My mother, sisters and Aunt Bertha all traveled together with me in the black limo. It was my first ride in a limo. I had barely been in cars because we never had one of our own. It was February and cold. In those days the prayers were read at the gravesite. I do not remember feeling cold but I do remember a feeling of something being over forever. The prayers were read in English and in Latin. My mind wandered. I looked at the faces and demeanor of the adults and tried to imitate their reactions. Then I looked around at all the names on the headstones; Krzyczk, Walkowski, Krzanowski, Lesinski. I knew these were all Polish names. In my world only family members and a few scattered neighbors were Polish. It seemed to me that the world was made up of Italians. My whole neighborhood was filled with them and as far as I knew at that age so was the world. It was starting to make sense… all the Polish people were dying off. There were hundreds… thousands…all dead and buried. Then I was hit by a thought; where are the Italians buried? I was walking back to my Uncle Frank’s car holding his hand. Everyone was involved in his or her own thoughts or conversations and we were alone. “Uncle Frank, where do they bury the Italians?” “What do you mean?” he asked. “All of the people buried here are Polish… where are the Italians?” He answered without hesitation, “Oh, they don’t bury Italians… they put slabs of cement on their feet and throw them in the river.” I knew that different nationalities had different traditions. I had no real understanding of irreverence or stereotypes so I bought the concept. It made sense to me. Uncle Frank and Aunt Helen had no children of their own. Frank was a wellspring of misinformation about everything. He got a kick out of filling my head with nonsense. I stashed this piece of trivia because I had no one to tell. After all, Italians would already know and everyone I knew was Italian. So, I sat on this bit of information until a year later when Mary Lou’s father died. She started telling me about where her father would be buried and I corrected her with the cement shoes/river information. She ran crying to her grieving mother and tugged on her arm to get her attention. “Mommy, mommy, Paula said that they’re going to put concrete shoes on daddy and throw him in the river!” Needless to say, I had not endeared myself to the grieving family. They simply assumed I was a malicious child… they already thought I was strange. I cleared up this misinformation with my sister Sue who explained about cemeteries where all the names are DiVencentis, Fittanti, Pompeo, and Petrella. So, at the age of eight Mary Lou was fatherless too. We both had young single lonely mothers who were looking for replacement daddies. They brought home their dates to meet us. We were not amused. This Thing Called Dead Cold to the touch, like rubber on rock. No one notices a curious child who wanders in wondering what dead means. I enter the room where a mound of flesh still as stone lies in a bed. My father is dead. I kneel on the floor and puzzle at the lack of life no movement no warmth, a package wrapped and ready to go. Could this have been a man? I do not know. Fingers poke and casually touch a face, an arm, a hand that was not available before to feel. I never saw this man in bed vulnerable to a child who is curious enough to move a finger to a cheek meek enough to know its now acceptable to handle what can't touch back or resist. I have no heart for this dead thing. It never was alive for me. I stand and turn toward the door but once more glancing back at the bed still pondering this thing called dead. |
| The Bunny and My Father’s Friend Tony When I was seven years old my father’s best friend Tony gave me a pet rabbit. It was an innocent gift to a wide-eyed child. He could not have understood the repercussions. That small harmless pet broadened the distance between my father and me. In those days I would go visit certain grown ups who had a knack for treating me as an equal. There are always some adults, usually ones who have not raised their own, who are interested in talking to children and finding out what they think. These were not the nosey neighbors who asked, in what they imagined was a child friendly tone, how your parents were getting along, what you had for dinner or if your older sister had a boyfriend. These were people, actual grown ups, that would listen to you and tell you interesting things about their own lives, especially their childhoods. Tony was such a grown up. He lived with his sister Lucy who was very kind and a little simple minded. It was Tony I really went to visit. He walked with a cane and was permanently stooped forward like an old man… but he was not very old. Most likely he was in his mid-forties like my father. When he was a young man he hurt his back playing baseball. The doctors gave him two choices; permanently vertical or permanently bent. He chose bent so that he would be able to sit and drive. Straight would mean he looked okay most of the time but he was limited to standing and reclining. Maybe the accident made him more reflective. Maybe he was just born to be a wise and gentle man. A visit to Tony and Lucy involved food. Lucy was a homemaker and she cooked and baked and cared for her brother. Their house was clean but faded. I loved their kitchen. It was the first room you entered and it was full of interesting things… like Plaster of Paris fruit plaques with smiling faces, dishtowels with colorful embroidered girls in fancy dresses and giant snake plants, probably all belonging to their parents who lived in the house before them. I felt welcomed. Lucy would laugh nervously scurrying around and getting plates and food. Tony would smile and greet me like an old friend and I would sit on the radiator and talk. They weren’t the typical questions about what grade I was in or the lame talk that passed as adult/child conversation. He would ask me about how I was feeling or if I learned any new games or songs. He would listen attentively as I sang him something I learned in school. He would follow up my answers with more questions that made me believe he was actually listening. He would relate a story from his own childhood in a strange and distant past or tell me about a game he used to play when he was seven. All this was a treat. I felt special and important. In those days everyone in Lovejoy had a garden and some people even had a few small animals that they would raise for food. We were within the city limits but no one in my neighborhood paid too much attention to ordinances prohibiting livestock. At various times I remember Tony having chickens or rabbits that he loving raised to be eaten. One day in early spring Tony brought me in the yard to see the new bunnies in the wire cage. I’m sure I didn’t ask… I was taught it was rude to ask for anything more than a glass of water. He must have offered and I was one bunny richer when I left that visit. I carried it in my two cupped hands the three blocks to my house. When I walked in my family was already at the dinning room table so it must have been Sunday or a holiday. My mother never held dinner for anyone. If guests were expected at noon and did not arrive until 12:05 they found us sitting at the table eating. She made no exceptions – the food was ready and we knew when it was being served. I must have looked like a Norman Rockwell painting holding my bunny to my belly. My father looked at me and then at my mother. I learned years later that my mother and father had almost divorced over a disagreement about my father’s breeding rabbits. My mother insisted that he get rid of all of them because my sister Joan had allergies and was always sick. She also argued that the rabbits drew rats and we had enough problems without inviting rats to roost. My father reluctantly gave up the rabbits but then moved out for two weeks. He stayed in a rooming house and had no contact with us until my mother called him at work and said she was taking him to court for support. Chet gave in – realizing that it was cheaper to keep her… as the song goes. Five years later when this new spawn of his loins came waltzing in with her own tiny rabbit it was like the final blow. He was defeated, my mother was triumphant. I was allowed to keep the rabbit as my mother argued that one small bunny does not equal two hundred rabbits. My father was not a happy man. He had always wanted to move into the country to work the land and raise animals but my mother would not hear of moving her girls out into no-man’s land. She had seen the way my father’s friend Eddy lived out in Attica. His family appeared to be more poverty stricken than we were. At least we were on a bus route and could go downtown to see the Christmas lights or down Broadway to window shop at Sattler’s or to the zoo; all that was free. Eddy’s family was stuck out there with nothing to do. That was my mother’s reality. It still is. The rabbits and the pigeons and the chickens and the goat and the fox terriers were all substitutes for the life my father really wanted. In turn, he gave them all up for my mother who never really got what she wanted… all his attention. It weakened him. It changed him. He clung to his patch of land in the back yard like the frustrated farmer he was. He raised our food when he could and the soil brought him closer to nature. The dirt was under his nails and in the small swirls of his fingerprints like abstract black and white photos. My father never forgave me for having that rabbit. I know it must seem unreasonable but it was not the symbol but that for which it stands. He died a little over a year later from heart disease. He was 48 years old. My Father the Poet My father was a poet. He ate the brains of calves to know their thoughts. Pigeons circled our roof of mottled polka dots and rotting sandpaper tiles. He whistled and they flew home sleek as seals wings pressed back in colors that looked like metals in the sun. He spoke their language. My father was a poet. His pen was a rake and hoe in a plot no bigger than the space of a two car garage he grew the things that feed me, corn and tomatoes, staff of life. Red velvet roses manicured like hands bejeweled in dew sparkling in the chill of a morning sun in June. His hands sank into the dark rich earth where he pulled out meaning in fistfuls from the damp soil. My father was a poet in the way his fingers understood wood and his eyes measured better than the green wooden ruler that folded up with brass hinges and embossed black numbers. He knew how to build things, how to grow things, and the ways of creatures who speak with their eyes. But my father the poet would not know me. |
| Money Making Schemes Back in the early 60’s, television kids always got an allowance. There would be episodes that revolved around The Beaver getting an advance where he would have to work his way up to asking for it, climax on the discussion with his father on why it was needed and then wind down with the moral that usually involved Mr. Cleaver being right about some well constructed point. No one I knew in the real world got an allowance. No one was paid for doing household chores. No one ever discussed "points" with their parents that did not result in a slap or a rousing rendition of, "Because I’m your mother, that’s why!" We had to approach our parents like beggars pleading for a quarter or a dime for some frivolous Snickers Bar or piece of plastic play jewelry from the Five and Ten. Our parents usually said "no" and then told us to go outside and play. They believed that we did not require cold hard cash because they were providing for all of our needs. "Needs" to a six year old included items that grown-ups could not fathom. Mary Lou and I were in the same boat. We became very creative in scraping together money to buy Nutty Buddies or Mallo Cups with valuable redeemable coupons on the back for merchandise or free candy. As I recall, we never got past the free candy stage because six year olds have the patience of insects that live for only 24 hours. One way we made money was to return bottles. We would gather them from home; scavenge for them around the neighborhood like the homeless or even beg them off our neighbors who didn’t really want to be bothered returning their empties anyway. This was not very profitable since a small pop bottle was worth two cents and the larger quart size bottles cashed in at a nickel. If we got lucky, John at the deli would hand us over an Indian Head nickel that we could sell to Elmer, a local colorful character, for a quarter. These bottles were not like the light aluminum cans or plastic bottles of today. They were leaded glass that was manufactured with a projected life of about 13 million years. They are often dug up, intact, out of 10 feet of compacted earth on the projected site of a new "Family Dollar." Two little girls with one red wagon and 75 pounds of bottles worth about 50 cents total. Not a very cost effective enterprise. In warm weather there was the popular Kool-Aid stand. This was remarkably profitable because our mothers provided the overhead with Kool-Aid, ice cubes, plastic cups etc. and we could charge five cents a glass! What self-respecting grown up could pass by two little girls looking out earnestly to make a go of a small business? What other kid could resist the tempting bright red, orange or green of sugar water on ice in the blazing heat of a summer’s day? We were golden! We could make over a dollar on one pitcher of the stuff. For a dollar in those days we could by 24 candy bars at Techmeyers where they gave you a deal on five-cent bars, six for 25 cents. We could go to the five and Ten and buy bags of cheap plastic do dads; stunning adjustable rings with glass rubies, diamonds and emeralds; rubber bugs and snakes; tops; jacks; jump ropes and cut outs. A dollar was a shopping spree waiting to happen. When our mothers refused to front us Kool-Aid we tried other creative projects. While rummaging like amateur archaeologists through the stone driveway in my backyard we would find bits and pieces of metal and wood. There would be rusted screws, washers, pieces of metal that we could not identify, wood chips and various other interesting items. We contemplated each piece creating meaning for each minute component. With the practiced genius of small inventors we combined these with Popsicle sticks, rubber bands and whatever else we could harvest from the gutter and sidewalk cracks. Mary Lou and I would assemble these items into whatever shape they suggested and then decided what they were. We would come up with fanciful and elaborate instructions for their use. When we had a small collection we would sell them door to door complete with explanations about how useful the item could be. We actually sold them. I now believe our wares were purchased to get rid of us but we didn’t know that at the time. I remember women coming to answer the doorbell, looking down at us while they whipped their hands on their aprons… "Sure, I’ll take one… give me the one that you put on the cupboard to scare away ants." What did our parents think of all this? They were certainly aware of the bottle returning and the Kool-Aid stands but if they ever knew about the inventions I do not remember. In those days if we were not fighting or crying or otherwise in trouble our parents were content that we were out of their hair. They did not plan out our time like childhood was a two week tour on a cruise ship. We were left to our own devices and free to imagine what to do next. And believe me… we did. |
| Schiller Street Fashions Most of the women on Schiller Street were non-glamorous. It seemed to be bad form to try to look too good. People did not dress in flashy ways so if you made an effort to say… have your purse match your shoes… everyone noticed. You may have then been subject to the suspicion that "she thinks she’s too good for us"… you were labeled snooty. When someone would walk from the bus stop at Schiller and Lovejoy they were observed in minutia by everyone. Loretta is a colorful swirl in an otherwise black and white memory of fashion on Schiller Street. She worked in an office downtown. She always dressed professionally and stylishly. Her hair was done, her nails were polished and her shoes matched her purse. To a six year old fascinated by Barbie dolls Loretta was a vision of loveliness. She clicked down the street from the bus stop in her high heals and Jackie Kennedy suits. She was a blur of color as she past all the dowdy married ladies in their house dresses and slacks chasing kids or hanging laundry. In my limited experience she was the only single woman of her age. There was not even a character on television like her. In the early 60’s before all the hubbub of woman’s lib and independence Loretta held a good job, supported herself, dressed like a character in a movie playing a secretary and she didn’t seem to care what the neighbors thought. Loretta had style. She was exotic and fascinating to me in a world where the men always seemed to have more interesting lives. She was my focus until one day, without ceremony, a woman moved into the apartment on the corner over the tavern. I never actually saw her move in but one day when Mary Lou and I were adventuring down Schiller Street we noticed a pink Mustang convertible. At six years old we had no real interest in cars, nor could we readily identify makes and models but we recognized this one as Barbie’s car. We stood in silent reverence, two squat six year olds in play clothes… eyes popping out of our heads as we wondered if indeed Barbie owned this car. We sat on the steps of the corner storefront and waited for the owner of the car to emerge. Six-year-old attention spans are pretty slim. An hour is a huge percentage of your life at six. My memory may fail me as I look back on what seemed to be a three-day vigil. I’m sure our parents would have frowned upon us staying out day and night for three days as we awaited the emergence of Barbie from her flat above the tavern. When Barbie finally appeared we were not disappointed. She was tall and thin, proportioned like the life sized Barbie doll we imagined. She was dressed in a shell pink fluffy dress, a dress that we had never seen in the JC Penney catalog. Her shoes were the kind that were dyed to match… the sort you would get if you were standing up for a wedding to match the peculiar color of your dress… they were pointy toed stiletto heals that she navigated like a pro. Her nails were polished pink to match the whole ensemble. But oh, the crowing glory of it all was even too wonderful to have been imagined… Barbie’s hair was tinted pink to match her dress. I stood up and excitedly asked this vision of loveliness, "Hey, are you really Barbie?" She giggled and told us that she wasn’t Barbie but Mary Lou and I didn’t believe her. We figured if someone as important and famous as Barbie was living on Schiller Street she would not want anyone to know it. We had heard stories about how movie stars used different names or wore sunglasses and scarves so that their fans would not recognize them. We would keep Barbie’s secret. It took us days to successfully close our mouths completely. For weeks we would make the daily pilgrimage to the corner at the appointed hour. Barbie would emerge with yet another pastel dress in sea green or apricot with all the matching accessories, including hair. We wanted to be her when we grew up. Whatever it was she did for a living we would follow in her exalted footsteps. We could not even imagine the occupation that called for such elaborate dress. Barbie’s employment in the doll world was always pretty vague. She had clothes to fit all occasions but she was unmarried and had no parents although she did have a little sister, Midge. She had a great house, a beautiful car, and furniture that met the standards of the rich and famous as far as two six year olds from Schiller Street were concerned. She had a nurse’s outfit, scuba gear, cheerleader clothes, and other occupation appropriate wear. We were never really concerned with her career. However, we did contemplate the occupation of our real Barbie. We never did figure out what she did. She moved out of the apartment over the bar after a few months. It wasn’t until we were much older that we were told she was a stripper. Maybe our Barbie doll was really a stripper too? I mean, her main claim to fame was her wardrobe… perhaps she had all those clothes so she could have a variety to remove for a curious audience… even with her lack of nipples and genitalia she must have drove them wild in doll land. I can imagine now, GI Joe spending his hard earned combat pay to see Barbie artfully slip off her nurse’s uniform. He would longingly look her up and down but without frustration because he too had no genitalia. Ken had no feeling of rage and jealousy because he had no testosterone in that nebulous lump where his penis should have been. The doll world must be a simple one. Needless to say, neither Mary Lou nor I ever became strippers. We did, however carry out our own fashion experiments as pre-teens and teenagers. If the archival photographs are any indication of our success… we never hit the fashion big time. |
| Bad Words We did not use "bad words" in my family. Bad words were defined not only as curses or profanity but also words that were harsh and hateful like "Niger", "wop" or "Pollack". It is not that I lived in a family free of prejudice but my father did not want us to sound low or coarse… maybe because it would be harder to marry us off. You can’t be too careful when you have four daughters to unload. I heard my father curse only once… "Son a bitch!" he yelled after coming down on his thumb with a hammer. I was shocked! It was like the world would explode from the atmosphere splitting under the pressure of my father’s voice saying such words. These words were not used on television. They were barely uttered in movies. There were people on my street that used them but they were adults to avoid. Children my age would dare not speak such words because beatings were still very fashionable. Mary Lou’s family did not have such an injunction against all the bad words. You could occasionally hear one of the lesser words fly from even Nonie’s lips in anger. They were hot-blooded Italians prone to passionate outbursts. I became accustomed to these words at Mary Lou’s house. I knew what the words meant because they usually referred to body parts or functions: ass, shit, piss pot, etc. I was a little sketchy on why "son of a bitch" was so bad since I was quite found of dogs… in fact, I often preferred them to people. "Bastard" was not very clear since it hadn’t yet occurred to me that anyone could have a baby without being married. Then there were all the words that called the name of God in vain. This too was unclear since at church these words were okay yet to call out "Jesus Christ" in desperation when you missed a bus was not. As I said, it was the beatings that kept me from questioning all these grey areas. One day while playing with cut outs in Mary Lou’s summer kitchen, I heard someone come out with a word I had never heard before. A word full of hard consonants, a short, powerful word spoken in an abrupt exclamation… "FUCK!" Mary Lou held both her hands up to her mouth with a look of terror in her eyes. I had no such reaction because the word was meaningless to me. I reacted like an animal only to the tone and impact. I asked her what was wrong and she told me that I had just been witness to the "baddest" word ever. I calmly responded, "That can’t be a bad word because it has no meaning. It just sounds bad because it’s loud. All the bad words have meanings like…" and now I whispered, "ass and shit. I know what they mean and you’re not supposed to talk about those things but "fuck" doesn’t mean anything so it can’t be bad." Mary Lou looked at me in fascination as I said the word out loud. She looked around to see if I was going to get a beating from her father. I think our parents had an agreement that allowed free-trade beatings between the two houses. Come to think of it, I believe they sold the rights to our butts to any adult that happened to be present when we were misbehaving. No one heard me use "the word" and I think Mary Lou was slightly disappointed that I wasn’t going to get smacked. However, at the tender age of six I was convinced I knew the meanings of all the words in the English language. Mary Lou insisted it meant something but she did not know what. The solution to this dilemma was simple. I would go to my house and ask my parents. As usual on Saturday afternoons my parents were entertaining my Aunt Helen and Uncle Frank at the kitchen table with all the fresh bread and sausage… what other people call cold cuts… that my father lugged back from the Broadway Market on the bus. Aunt Helen and Uncle Frank would pop in every Saturday at lunchtime to eat their fill of our provisions… it was a tradition. Such are the inequities of life; they were well off and childless and we were pretty hard up with six mouths to feed. My mother was always gracious. There they were… my unsuspecting parents and my always old seeming Godmother with her mildly demonic husband who teased me relentlessly every moment I was in his presence. I walked in, invisible as all six year olds were in those days. I tugged at my mother’s dress sleeve. "Momma, what does "fuck" mean?" The reaction was more than I could have hopped for. I had the floor. No one moved. I continued, "Mary Lou says it’s a bad word but I told her it can’t be bad unless it means something. What does it mean?" "Where did you hear that word!" my mother insisted. "Mary Lou’s father said it." "Well, don’t YOU ever say that word AGAIN!" my mother demanded. My Aunt chimed in with "You dasn’t use such vulgar language!" "Dasn’t" was some ancient word she carried over from her mother’s generation that began before indoor toilets were common. Everyone was abuzz. I had caused electricity with a simple word. "But what does it MEAN?" I insisted. My mother gave me some generic response like, "You will understand when you’re older." "When? How old? Will you tell me when I’m seven?" "No, much older…" This was my first clue that there was more to know, that there was information that adults held secret… that I would have to be a grown up before I could be let in on the mystery. Childhood seemed uninteresting and I wanted to shake it off like an old skin. My family went back to their liverwurst and horseradish mustard on rye and their Frey’s baloney and Polish Falcon dills pickles. I went outside full of curiosity and followed a potato bug until I scared it enough that it rolled itself up and pretended to be a stone. I picked it up and put it in my pocket to show Mary Lou. There was something interesting at least 20 times between my house and hers three doors down. This is because as a child you are so much closer to the ground and your eyesight is better. Now I couldn’t see a potato bug from an upright position unless it was hanging from my eyelash. |
| The Pleas of the Angelfish I remember how I reasoned things out as a very young child. Like a small mammal I would consider an object and come to some conclusion based on the few fragments of experience I had collected and some innate reasoning ability. The conclusions were bound to be off, although original. Adults have trouble with originality. They are logical in their deductions because they have experience and a substantial knowledge base fashioned from everything they’ve read, seen on TV or movies, and heard in conversation. When an adult witnesses a child act out on one of the child’s original conclusions the adult will most likely react as follows: "What on earth were you thinking?!" This statement is a sure sign that said adult has forgotten their own intricate thought processes as a child. Children create their own reality but adults usually follow the accepted system like it is truth. On this note, we visit my father’s tropical fish tank on a table in the dinning room. It was always apparent that Chet was more comfortable with animals than humans. My father loved the peaceful movements of the fancy fish through their liquid environment. Probably because it was in direct contrast with his reality through which four graceless daughters beat a path that wore the floral carpet thin. When I was about three years old I loved to pull up a chair to the fish tank and watch the fish glide behind the ferns or through the china house with the mermaid on top. If you touched the glass tank the fish would swim up to your finger curious to see what type of fish your were and if you were suitable to eat. Their mouths were always pulsing. One day while fixating on an angelfish I imagined there was a look of desperation in his eyes. He hovered for what seemed like a long time to a child who had been alive for less than 2,000 days… two minutes could seem an eternity. By this age I had seen enough cartoons to know that fish can speak. I was sure this fish was trying to tell me something… something important. The glass of the fish tank was interfering with the dissemination of this information. I was concerned and had to hear what he as saying… there was an urgency in his eyes… perhaps he was hungry or needed medicine for his babies. The fact that I had seen them on more than one occasion eat their own young did not deter me. I did what any concerned citizen would do under the circumstances… I stood on the chair, lifted the top off the fish tank, and stuck my head in the water, convinced I would then hear the pleas of the Angelfish. This must have happened on a weekend because it was my father who walked in to find me precariously tiptoeing on the dining room chair with my head totally submerged in the now over-flowing tank. I was lifted up and at arms length presented to my mother who was in charge of washing off my various conclusions. I may have tired to explain but it fell on deaf ears. I was simply a willful child who didn’t have a sensible brain in her head. And, if memory serves me correctly, the fish tank was off limits for the rest of my natural life. I was sure the fish missed me… I could read their lips from a distance. |
| Lovejoy East Lovejoy is located on the East Side of Buffalo, New York. It’s a blue-collar neighborhood. Lovejoy is called Iron Island because it is surrounded on all four sides by railroad tracks. It is bordered by William, Central, Broadway and an odd little area called Sloan. Sloan is a suburb of a larger suburb called Cheektowaga. Lovejoy is an anomaly in Buffalo. It’s like Mayberry. Everyone knows everyone else’s business in this ten by five block isolated district. If you travel down Broadway all your life you may never know it exists because there is only one through street on that route. Even though there are numerous side streets that cut into Lovejoy on the William Street side… no one seems to notice them. N. Ogden is the only real contact with the outside world. Lovejoy, back in the old days, was totally self-contained like a small town. The main street had a couple markets, a post office in one of the two drug stores, a 5&10, barber shops, beauty parlors, a fire hall and a police station, furniture store, a movie theater, tons of what we call "gin mills" with several that served food that we called bar and grilles. Everything you needed was contained in this area. You never needed to leave and some people never did. We became inbred to some degree. There were families of fame or notoriety. Many married neighborhood sweethearts. We had our own distinct culture. This ten-block area was my world. My parents had no car so my horizons were limited. From my porch I could see a rise where the railroad tracks carried freight trains back and forth many times a day. These trains were colorful and interesting. I was familiar with their sound. Their rhythm clicked over the tracks. The high-pitched squeaking of the break and the occasional blast of a horn were common. When it was quiet in the thin air of a summer night I could hear a voice from a speaker-box near the switch. I could never really make out what was being said but it always reminded me of the voice of God. I used to imagine that God spoke to Mosses through one of those contraptions. I would sit on my steps and watch the trains pass behind the empty field across the street. I learned to count by watching trains and keeping track of the cars. I learned to hope for the red caboose at the end with the man waving out the window. That was where my world ended and I was anxious to see what was on the other side. My ancient Aunt Helen told me stories about how the buffalo roamed in the land beyond the hill when she was a girl. She had been raised in this same house. The buffalo story was a load of bull. My Aunt Helen was blessed or cursed with the Wachowiak fancy. They weren’t lies really, but part of a convoluted reality she created for herself as real as Schiller Street. Behind the tracks was a line of enormous power towers. They were designed wider at the bottom in a tall narrow vaguely pyramid-like shape. The top tapered where the electric lines were attached. As a very young child I was sure these were space rockets. I would sit on my steps and stare at them waiting for one to take off like I had seen in cartoons and old episodes of Buck Rogers on very early morning TV. Growing up in a place like Lovejoy had its benefits and its drawbacks. The close-knit society created almost unlimited freedom for small children. However, as a child you could never get away with anything because someone six blocks away would recognize you from church. Church or rather churches played a paramount role. There were three large Catholic churches with schools attached. Church bells tolled the hour, mass time and the dead. You got so used to bells chiming all day long that you didn’t hear them anymore. St. Agnes was about eight blocks away. The bells were the old kind up in the tower and they played one song either slowly or not. St. Francis was down the street and it had one of those new mechanical bells that played seasonal or hymnal music. At first I thought it was great but waking up to A Mighty Fortress is our God announcing eight o’clock mass can grate on your nerves after awhile. Visitation never seemed as important since it was several blocks further than St. Agnes and the bells were muffled by distance. My church and school was St. Agnes. My parents went to grammar school there and this was their idea of an alumni tradition. It was a small beautiful church built of stone and heavy wood. The doors were as weighty as trees and had big round cast iron handles. It always felt like God lived there. The ceiling over the altar had a scene with God the father pointing and angels in a field of blue with clouds. There were other murals on the walls depicting bible stories. There were loads of statues of saints like Agnes, Mary, Joseph and a huge scary crucifix on the east wall that looked down on the people in the front of the church. The benches were carved dark wood with attached kneelers covered in wine colored velveteen upholstery. The altar was imposing. It was an ornate expanse of eggshell white and behind it was the host in a golden sun shaped Eucharist incased in glass. The pulpit was the same dark wood as the pews and the priest had to solemnly climb the winding stairs to address the congregation from above. As Catholics this was our only familiarity with the bible. We heard only the hand picked appropriate stories from the Old Testament. The incest, mayhem, and bloody sacrifices were glazed over or avoided. This was family programming at its finest. I liked the stories. I don’t remember much religious education at St. Agnes besides memorizing Catechism that was written in a Platonic question and answer format simple enough for a child. My first experience with the grammar school was at about three or four years old. My mother was taking me to Hennepin Park and I was hit by the urge to go and I had to go NOW. We were walking on Ludington between the rectory and the boxy industrial looking red brick schoolhouse. It was a day when school was in session so we were able to enter the building. I had never before climbed these stairs to the edifice that would encompass nine years of the most formative time of my life. I could not see my future and I could not even fathom a place that would try to control my movements and mind. I was mostly left to my own devices at home to create my own reality. Here, at school they would explain that there is only one reality and everyone, more or less, agrees on that. As we entered the building we were approached by a woman in a long black dress with a black veil and a white piece of fabric covering everything but the small round of her face. I remember her being tall and delicate. I had seen such women before but had never thought much about them. They all seemed very old and quiet like they did not want to be bothered by a child. This one addressed me. There was a brief introduction and my mother told the woman that three of my sisters had graduated from this school. The nun bent over with her long slender fingers on her knees and seemed interested in me. She asked me, "I dress in black and white. Do you know what I am?" I had just seen Bambi and was quite taken with Flower so my logical response came quickly and with much enthusiasm, "Yes! You’re a skunk!" To me this was the ultimate compliment and a reasonable guess. Flower was sweet and very kind as seemed this strange woman who was barring my way to relief in the girls’ room. My mother was mortified. She apologized profusely. The nun seemed less concerned. The adult translation of what I said was an insult even though I had meant it as a compliment. No one ever bothered to ask me why I said what I said. However, what I did say appealed to my mother’s odd sense of humor as she repeated the story to everyone over the next few days. Everyone laughed in the way shocking things make you laugh. I enjoyed hearing the story told because it concerned me and it created a framework for a modest amount of attention. I was a star for a few days so I never revealed that this scandalous comment from the mouth a child was a well thought out observation and even a compliment. I learned that interpretation is as valid as intent. Our actions and words are interpreted by the minds of other people. Misinterpretation is common because each of us has created our own definitions through a set of unique experiences. No one listens to the explanations because their own meaning blinds them. And, of course, the adults never thought for a moment that a four year old had any explanation at all. |
| The Haircut I remember my father coming home from the Broadway Market with brown paper shopping bags filled with things to eat. There was always a big sack of sandwich cookies because they were the cheapest cookies he could buy. I remember loving sandwich cookies… especially the lemon ones… even though I knew they were the only store-bought cookies we could afford in our house where cash flow was always a problem. One Saturday when Chet hefted the brown bags on the kitchen table I was coming forward for my lemon sandwich cookie when I overheard an adult money conversation that was not meant for my ears. "Paula needs a haircut." My mother innocently broached. "Can’t it wait until next week? I’m a little short right now," was my father’s response. "Her bangs are hanging in her eyes already… she looks sloppy. I’ll take her to the place off Clinton, she’ll do it for a dollar." My father looked uncertain. By this time my duty was clear. I would cut my own hair and save my family one-dollar and bus fare. There was no question in my mind that my scissor skills were good enough to cut hair. Hadn’t I managed to cut out intricate paper doll outfits from even the most sophisticated paper doll books… things with bows and lace and streaming ribbons? Okay, so once in awhile I had to scotch tape a ribbon back onto a dress but how hard could it be to cut my hair? Certainly not as hard as cutting out the traced shape of my own hand when I made that fabulous turkey to hang on the refrigerator for Thanksgiving. I slipped the sewing scissors behind the couch and without the assistance of a mirror began to hack away at my straight fine hair until at some arbitrary moment I was satisfied the job was done. I came out from behind the sofa triumphant as I presented my answer to the haircut/cash dilemma. I stood proudly and smiled broadly waiting for them to recognize the simple solution to the problem at hand. The expression on my mother’s face was not one of admiration and thanks as I had anticipated. Instead she looked at me in horror… if I had been "sloppy" a few moments ago, now I was a down right mess. After Irene’s first surge of panic she whined, "Paula Marie! What did you do? What were you thinking?" I was confused and disappointed. I tired to understand why she wasn’t proud of my fabulous idea that saved one dollar and change. I tried to explain that I did it for her… for them… for the family. In those days no over ever really listened to a little kid. It seemed to make as much sense as having a discussion with a bird you trained to say a few words. No one ever expected those words to actually MEAN anything. Next thing you know I’m on the Bailey bus with a kerchief tied around my head on my way to the beauty salon in the back of the lady’s house off Clinton. She ran an illegal hair salon without a license… I did not know this at the time and even if I did it would have meant nothing. My mother did know, but a buck was a buck and it looked like a beauty salon with the pink vinyl chairs with gold asterisk like stars and matching chair-style hair drier. The white Formica counters and sink were always clean and there were cookies baking for her kids while she snipped away at my troubled hair. My bangs had to be clipped almost to my hairline and they stuck out slightly giving the effect of a rabbit fur trimmed face. She got me looking almost normal but there were questions from my school friends about the unusual haircut. I gave them an earful about how I tried to save the day by cutting my own hair. My friends were amazed that I had not been beaten for this act of unruliness. It appeared that my friends would not have come to the same conclusion that I did that fateful Saturday morning. It is always easier to make the right decision after someone you know tells you their story about how they had made the wrong decision. Frankly, I still did not see why I had not been given the Golden Child Award for thoughtfulness even if I saw, after a quick look in the mirror, that I would not be getting the Hairstylist of the Year Award. Apparently, intension did not count for anything. How could it when no one ever listened to the explanation? I was plagued by this for most of my childhood; an adult asking me "why" but never listening to the reason. |
| In the Beginning
I am the youngest child of four. My three sisters are ten, eleven, and thirteen years my senior. It was like growing up in a family of four mothers—one real and three unwilling siblings who resented my coming into their world. From their perspective, their own personal mother and father, at the advanced ages of 32 and 39, had done the deed in some twisted expression of elder lust. How thoroughly disgusting. My mother, Irene, claims I was not an accident. She wanted a boy. Her three girls were getting out of the cuddling stage and Chet, my father, was not exactly warm and fuzzy. I believe she felt that profound sense of loneliness we all feel when we lack enough human touch and a baby was just what she needed. However, first Irene had to convince Chet that the odds were in favor of a boy; otherwise he would not celebrate the birth of another child. My two middle siblings Joan and Sue have their own theory. They believe our eldest sister Marie had put in her order for a baby and our mother complied as she usually did. Marie was the first child and indulged by virtue of the ‘squeaky wheel gets the grease" method. I find the idea that my eldest sister wanted more competition ridiculous since most of my childhood memories of her have been repressed. I feared her and avoided her whenever possible. It might also be true that Chet resented my birth because mom got pregnant without consulting him. She did this because she knew he’d say no. Chet did not have a regular job. He worked seasonal construction in the days before that was a good paying stable occupation. Another child meant more doctor bills, more clothes, more everything. Irene soothed him by convincing him I would be his first son. She built this fantasy until everyone believed it. They only had a boy’s name picked out. The doctor even started to believe. He assured Irene that my heart was too strong to be female. This was in the olden days before medical technology could accurately determine the sex of your unborn child. Everyone had his or her own method of guessing and apparently everyone had predicted I was to be a boy. When I was presented through the glass of the viewing room window Chet shook his fist at Irene. Here I was… their new daughter, Paula instead of Paul. Another female in a house with one bathroom. Another girl’s purity to worry about. Another 20 years of keeping her safe so she could marry with honor. It was 1955 and Chet was nearly 40. He was from a distant time and mindset. The whole world was about to change… except for Chet. I also heard a rumor that Chet planned to run off when his three girls were old enough to marry. Consequently, the story goes that Irene got pregnant with me as a kind of insurance for the next 20 years. This is what’s known as a subplot. I think my father was from the old school of long suffering and doing the right thing. He had his religion and he had the solitude of his thoughts that he cultivated in his garden and through the work of his hands. He took care of my mother like his fifth child. This is not the mod of operation of a man who plans to leave. He did not encourage my mother’s independence. He protected her from the harsh realities of the world. No, the best that I can figure is that my willful mother got pregnant on a whim. Once she was pregnant there was nothing to do but have the child. She knew this and so did Chet. If I had been a boy Chet would have been delighted. Irene’s pregnancy was difficult. I was lying on her spine and she spent much of the nine months in bed. This too did not endear me to old Chet who had to tend to a sick wife. This was also a problem for the three adolescent girls who had to pick up the slack. Little did I know lying there safely pinning down my mother’s spine creating exquisite pain what was to be in my world. My mother loved me and tired like hell to get everyone else on board but Chet never softened and my sisters never got over me. When Irene unwrapped me on the enamel kitchen table my sisters looked on in horror. "Is she Chinese?" this was a question in which I imagine my father was most interested. "No, babies look funny when they’re born." Funny like Charlie Chan I suppose. In the usually-unflattering hospital photo I look like the spawn of Genghis Khan. Now this is MY version. On October 17, 1955 the male child who was supposed to be Paul Wachowiak was slipped out of the delivery room at Sister’s Hospital in Buffalo, New York. He was replaced with the newly born female child of a rich and cultured family who needed a male heir. Even at a young age I wondered why there was no Grey Poupon on hand. We had items in our fridge like headcheese, Limburger, pickled pigs’ feet and thick slices of tongue. The refrigerator was like a house of horrors. My father was into organ meat. There were mornings when I would awaken to the odd aroma of calf’s brains sizzling in a frying pan. This can damage a sensitive child with rich DNA. Somewhere the boy child, the natural heir to this family was riffling through the pate’ and smoked lobster in his refrigerator wondering why the cook never made duck blood soup or kieska a sausage that contained everything that should have been burned or buried after slaughtering the pig. I dreamed my real family would someday claim me… maybe they would need a kidney or something. Paul Wachowiak would slide right into this family and happily eat sardines out of the can with my father at the kitchen table. This never happened and I spent my formative years imagining that I was living in a Dickens novel. |
| Dumbo – My Pet Elephant It was 1961 the year I first realized that I could not trust my mother. Once you get caught in a lie to a child you have lost them for good. Kids aren’t stupid just very very experience limited. That’s why they can’t understand why anything is more important than them and why they can’t run for president of anything. The year I saw Dumbo for the first time I was too young to know the difference between cartoons and reality. I did not have enough life experience to understand that elephants can not fly and that little girls can not keep an elephant in the yard, whether it flies or not. Flying elephants might be even less welcome in the neighborhood than my father’s pigeons that reputedly crapped all over the neighborhood. Flying elephant poop could take out a new Oldsmobile. A five year old does not know any of this. I begged my mother for an elephant… a small one like Dumbo. I harangued her mercilessly until with utter exasperation she simply caved in. "Where will you keep him?" "I’ll clear a space in the yard by the garbage cans." "What about the winter?" "Can’t he stay in the woodshed?" "Elephants eat too much." "It will just be a little elephant." She was unequal to the stamina of a five year old. So, in September 1961, she promised me an elephant for my sixth birthday in October. I am quite sure she felt in her heart of hearts that said elephant would be ancient history to me in six weeks when my thoughts would turn to some new obsession… this may be why I was never taken to see Godzilla. But this was a true desire. I must have fallen in love with Dumbo. My first love was a cartoon elephant that flies. It makes all the rest of my relationship choices seem normal in retrospect. I diligently cleaned out a corner of the yard. I even have a vague recollection of asking my father, whom I rarely spoke to, about acquiring some outdoor bedding materials. I am sure he secretly hoped I planned to live outdoors… maybe somewhere in Michigan. I told everyone I knew that I was getting an elephant for my birthday. The school was abuzz with the amazing news that someone in the first grade would be getting an elephant. I had become a minor celebrity. When I told my best friend Mary Lou her father once again forbid her to be friends with the peculiar Polack who was filling her head full of nonsense. This was more or less a frequent request… Mary Lou told her father too much. My mother always had lavish birthday parties for me. There were noisemakers and paper poppers from the 5 & 10, small useless plastic toys as favors, and a homemade chocolate cake with Neapolitan ice cream. Most of my girlfriends from school and Schiller Street would show up in party dresses. Joann’s dress was always the puffiest, Mary Lou’s was a print shift made by her mother who worked at Sattler’s in the fabric department, Patty had fancy layered dresses in pastel shades and Theresa would come in slacks. There were often over ten little girls bearing gifts and gathered around the dining room table. We would play Pin the Tail on the Donkey and guessing games if the weather was bad or we’d run around in the back yard when the weather was unseasonably warm. My mother had unlimited patience with children. An invitation to one of my birthday parties was a hot ticket even though most of the girls had a notion there was something fundamentally wrong with me. That year there was a bigger crowd than normal. Everyone who got an invitation showed up. There were not enough chairs for all the little girls and there was a feeling of heightened anticipation in the air. When would I be presented with the elephant? Where was it now? Would it be big enough to ride? I was feeling triumphant in my superiority to normal children who had to settle for dogs and cats as pets if they had any at all. I would proudly walk my elephant. I would be magnanimous to the skeptics who did not believe my mother would buy me an elephant… I would show them a graceful victory. All this had been thought out over the six weeks of anticipation. I opened all my gifts. Cutouts, puzzles, doll clothes, and coloring books with new boxes of crayons. My mother saved her gift for last. I was crazy with excitement. After all the gifts were opened my mother brought out a large box wrapped in bright paper. I tried to figure out in my six year old mind how on earth she fit the elephant in there. I imaged it all scrunched up and suffocating so I unwrapped it like I was trying to put out a fire. When I got the box open I pulled out a large stuffed teddy bear that had a plaid upper body to emulate a decorative vest and a bowtie. I thought this was a ruse to heighten my excitement. "Where’s my elephant?" I asked excitedly. "Elephant?" asked my mother. When she saw my face she said, "Oh, the elephant! You’re getting that for Christmas." I was disappointed but relieved to save face with all the smug girls who were beginning to giggle and whisper. I had a house full of witnesses. I was getting an elephant! My mother said it with such conviction how could it not be the truth? In those early years the two months between my birthday and Christmas seemed like an eternity. This year the time went by even slower. It was painful. I waited out the excruciating nine weeks like I was locked in a room awaiting execution. I became great friends with the bear I got for my birthday. I named him Stuffy, which seemed appropriate since he was stuffed. I slept with him, talked to him and fed him cookies and milk. He was the sounding board for my ardent expectation. I promised him that my love for him would not diminish once the elephant arrived but that we would share in the joys of elephant ownership. Christmas Eve was a holy terror. When Santa Claus arrived I was concerned because he seemed to be wearing a mask. He was unlike the previous year’s Santa Claus who very well could have been the REAL Santa Claus. When I asked my sister Sue about the mask she responded in a reasonable tone, "Santa Claus must have taken his beard to the dry cleaner and it didn’t come back in time." Okay, so that explained the mask… now what about the fact he sounded like Uncle Lenny? I was willing to suspend disbelief for the sake of my younger cousins. There was still no sign of an elephant but most of my gifts were under the tree the next morning so I was unworried. I got a bride doll from Aunt Helen that would have normally sent me into a tailspin of joy. I was disinterested because I had bigger things on my mind… literally. The next morning I was the first one awake. Stuffy escorted me from the bedroom to the living room where we put the baby Jesus into the manger and arranged all the stable animals close around to keep him warm. Then I scoped out the packages for the ones that belonged to me. There were plenty but because of their size they did not interest me. Where was my elephant? I put on my slippers and went out into the woodshed. Not there. I opened up the door and walked outside into the snow to the back of the house. Not there. I tramped back into the house and walked to the front door and opened it onto an empty front porch. Not there. It began to be obvious that there was no elephant. I could not believe that this could be true. Hadn’t my mother just about sworn in front of every person I knew that there would be an elephant for Christmas? There were witnesses… this was beyond my scope of experience and I was crushed. I ambled back to the tree. No one was up yet… it was not yet completely daylight. I disinterestedly opened my gifts. There were games and dolls and new flannel pajamas. It all seemed meaningless. My parents awoke to a morbid child sitting in the midst of Christmas wrapping paper and boxes of toys clutching her stuffed bear and rocking slowly back and forth. My mother was baffled, "Don’t you feel good, Paula? What’s the matter?" "Where’s my elephant?" I asked defiantly. "Oh, that… how was Santa supposed to fit an elephant into his sleigh? He had so many things to bring for ALL the children not just YOU." "Then why did you tell me I would get an elephant if you knew he couldn’t fit it in the sleigh?" "How could I have known that? Do you think I know everything?" Ahhh, yes I did think she knew everything. And I did think that everything she said was the gospel truth. This was the end of the innocence and the beginning of doubt and questioning. I would have to weigh everything she said against everything else I knew. There was no longer precedence for blind faith. I got up and walked with Stuffy to the kitchen for a glass of milk. From then on it was us against the world. He never much liked milk; it made the fur on his face sticky and weird. |
| The Bug Tree and the Worm Experiment In those awkward formative years of grammar school my best friend was Mary Lou. Even as a very young child she knew the power of manipulation. If you would ask her today you may find out that I was a bizarre child with a schizophrenic imagination who was always getting her into trouble. But this is my book and I remember it this way. Mary Lou played me like a violin. She would challenge me to an ice cream eating race, pretend to be rushing through her ice cream sucker then taunt me with an almost intact one when she saw mine was down the hatch. She would tell other kids on the street lies about me turning everyone against me so that she was my only friend. She used that trick with all of us on Schiller and it worked for years. We put up with Mary Lou because she was the most charismatic, a born leader and she had the best yard on the street. Her yard contained a pool, swing set, and the bug tree. The bug tree was a huge tree with whip-like seedpods that hung down from its branches almost all year long. They were a constant source of entertainment to the street full of maniacal children. The bug tree was often the center of society and it was crawling with huge black ants. We would reroute the bugs that were making their way up the fabulous deep craggy bark of the tree. We’d make up stories about how they would get lost and have adventures like in the badly dubbed Italian Hercules movies we sat through every Sunday at the Lovejoy Show. The bug tree was almost better than the pool or the swing set that was older than anyone we knew. There was a big wooden bench under the bug tree where we would get a head start climbing up the heavy branches. That bench served as a play station for dolls, games and fantastic feats of jumping. Once the bench became a platform for science when one of us heard that if you cut a worm in half it would grow into two worms. We were fascinated and decided to take science into our own pudgy fingers. First we gathered several fat worms out of Nonni’s (Mary Lou’s Grandmother) garden. Next we escorted the squirming monsters to the sacrificial altar below the bug tree. We borrowed Mary Lou’s mothers kitchen knife and I held down the unsuspecting subjects in an experiment in a-sexual reproduction as Mary Lou cut them into quarter inch sections. Why settle for two worms when theoretically you can get ten? We were going to repopulate the world with fresh new worms. It didnt take long for the worms to stop squirming and for us to loose interest. We decided it would take at least over night for this miracle to occur. So, Mary Lou wiped the knife off on the seat of her pants and replaced it back in the utensil drawer like a good girl. The next morning, bright and early and I do mean early I was calling Mary Lou at her back door. It was my custom to get a head start on playing by ambling out of bed at about 6 a.m., dressing myself and slipping out the door before anyone knew I was gone. Mary Lou’s parents and grandmother found this less than charming. In those days children did not use the doorbell nor did they knock on the door. We called each other in a singsong yell "Oh Mary Lou!" which I tried to do in a hushed tone to avoid the wrath of her angry family. She ambled out of bed and we solemnly walked back to the bug tree to feel the thrill of creation. Instead there lay two dried up worms that had been the victims of cold-blooded mayhem. We looked at each other in disbelief. Hadn’t an adult told us that you could make more than one worm out of a single specimen? Didn’t adults know everything? How had we failed? Afterward, upon our copious investigations we learned that worms have several hearts and you must sever them between these to assure success. The thought of worm hearts was enough to send us back to our enterprise of creating adventure scenarios for bugs by rerouting their travels. Mary Lou’s mom never found out about how we had defiled her flatware |
| Tom Jones, the Neighborhood Mechanic At 13 a girl is coming out of childhood trying to figure out how to be a woman. In tribal societies they might get a tattoo or a piercing to mark this passage. There would be a ceremony with fire and dancing. In East Lovejoy in 1969 the rites of passage were a little different. You began to find your sexuality but with the mind of a child you would emphasize it like a Japanese geisha. Too much make-up, tight clothes, cigarettes and Boons Farm wine. We thought we were Cher with our long straight hair and hot pants. But, we were not Cher so we wore panty hose with the hot pants to make our legs look firm and sleek. And of course there was the ultimate in fashion accessories, the contour bra. These were built of some sort of material designed by NASA to keep the equipment from shifting around during the moon landing. The bras were constructed in concentric circles that narrowed dramatically to a point. Lucy and I would walk the three miles to the Thruway Plaza and buy these contraptions at least a cup size larger than was necessary. You could put on a tight nylon shell and look like Marilyn Monroe. Your breast sat inside the molded cup like the lost filling in a lopsided donut. We had to be very careful. If you pressed anything to your chest one of your augmented breasts might collapse. By falling forward suddenly from the waist you could get your breast to pop the cup out again. No hugging allowed either - the danger was real. We were self-designed manikins that were meant to be looked at only. This was the get-up. Pantyhose with no panties otherwise the skin tight shorts would have tell tale panty lines that would alert the boys we were sensible enough to put on underwear before leaving the house. Sandals in which you would need to fold the reinforced toes of your pantyhose under your foot so you could fool everyone into thinking that you had smooth shinny legs and were not wearing pantyhose. The contour bra was fluffed out to a "C" cup with your poor pitiful breast lost in the cavernous wasteland. Nylon shell in a pastel shade with the zipper up the back because clothing manufacturers still hadn’t figured our how to get a neckline to stretch over a head then stretch back into place. Shorts so tight that if you tried to sit down your thighs would bulge out like inflatable rafts, pantyhose or not. Once we styled ourselves into what we thought were hot chicks we would visit the gas station on the corner of Lovejoy and N. Ogden. The dashing attendant, who to us was a full-grown man, was a sophisticated 16 years old. He looked so much like Tom Jones that we used to sing "Its Not Unusual" at full throttle until we were within earshot. We’d even scream spontaneously once in awhile. If we would have had underwear on wed have whipped it at him. Taking off the contour bras was not an option. I wonder what he thought of us as we sat there trying to seem nonchalant about hanging around the station like we were simply waiting for our cars to be repaired. We’d buy gum from the machine and chew the whole pack before we left. I’m not sure what we wanted out of old Tom. If he had touched us we would had fainted. If he asked one of us on a date the other would have been devastated even though neither one of us was technically allowed to date. My mother said I could go out with boys when I was 16. Lucy’s father said she could go on a date after he picked out her husband. Tom was the last of our girl crushes. We just wanted to stand around and have him talk to us and flirt innocently. We knew that we were trying to look sexy but we really didn’t know why. Boys liked it and we liked boys. We knew nothing about being looked at as sex objects. Hell, most of our friends were boys and they liked us because we were fun to hang around. We thought that’s how boyfriends would be. We didn’t know why our parents didn’t want us to leave the house like that. We thought they were old fashioned and that sex did not exist until we found out about it a couple years ago. We wanted to look glamorous like models or movie stars. We were lucky enough to still be innocent. For me, it would be years before some boy with practiced nonchalance would brush his hand across a breast pretending not to notice then brag to all his friends that I let him cop a feel. Boys from blocks away would show up to ask me out on dates based on this report. They would be baffled when I’d slap them as they made their mad dash at my private parts. "Joe said you let him touch them!" I burst into tears and ran home devastated that Joe would have told such a vicious lie. Id stay in the house for days and emerge shame faced and swollen eyed. Then the offers for dates would die down and my life was back to normal playing kick ball in the street. |
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Kotex I am five years old. I take a bath on Saturday nights. Everyone in my house takes a bath on Saturday night. On these bath nights, in some twisted parody of Shirley Temple my mother coaches me to come out of the bathroom and put on a very small performance for my family. My wet hair is parted and combed in the "bowl over the head" style sported my Moe of the Three Stooges and I'm dressed in a fresh pair of pajamas and slippers. All the way from the bathroom in the back of the house to the living room in the front of the house I walk with mincing steps, hands folded in prayer straight up and pointed. My family is sitting on the pink boucle horsehair sofa in front of the black and white television in the blond wood cabinet. When I get to the parlor I announce with full knowledge of the desired effect of my little theatrical routine that, "I'm a little angel." I now realize that the first time I did this it may have actually been adorable but after weeks and weeks I'm sure my sisters wanted to vomit up their Saturday evening popcorn. One Saturday there was a variation on this theme. During the week I had asked my mother what the enormous box of Kotex sitting next to the toilet was for. There are four menstruating women in this house, tampons had not yet been invented and if I know my father he would have forbid their use... something about defilement or damaged goods. So here was the large economy size box of Kotex and it would deplete at a rather rapid rate every month. When you are sitting on the toilet and you can't read yet you tend to notice these things. So, I asked, "Momma, what are these for?" "They are bandages." "Bandages? I've never seen anyone wear these and somebody is using an awful lot of them." She responds without hesitation, "These bandages are for sore throats and are only used at night when you go to bed. By the time we use them you are asleep." "How are they used for sore throats?" "Well, you spread Vicks on the soft part, place it on your throat and tie it in the back." This made sense! However, I was a bit concerned that my family suffered from so many sore throats. Now it's a Saturday night. I am in the bathtub and for some reason my mother is not forth coming with her little theater direction for "I'm a little angel." I am feeling big enough to get out and get dressed myself. And what's this? Do I feel a sore throat coming on? My... I don't need to call my mother because I know the cure. I slip into my pajamas, comb my wet hair into the traditional young Chinese peasant style. Next, I grab a Kotex out of the box, spread on a nice even layer of Vicks, position it on my tiny neck and tie it in the back. 1 imagine my family will be so proud of me for taking the initiative. Meanwhile... in the living room my father and sisters know nothing of the conversation I had with momma about the neck bandages. This time, instead of "I'm a little angel" I appear at the archway between the dinning room and the parlor with a Kotex tied around my neck and announce that I am going to bed. There has never been that much silence in any room of my house at any time. There is no conversation because everyone except my mother is flabbergasted. Things like Kotex are not discussed in the living room or in the presence of my father. No one utters a sound as I carry myself like a queen in a neck brace to my room. The uneasy silence turns into whispering and muffled laughter. I must have sensed that the "sore throat bandage" was the cause because I don't remember ever trying that again... even though I was plagued with a pair of bad tonsils. |
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Fur Coat Every year St. Agnes held a flea market to raise money for the church and school. Parishioners would donate old stuff around their houses and it would be displayed in the school basement on long tables where we ate our lunches during the school week. I was enthralled by these sales. If I was lucky enough to have a quarter I could haul away quite a collection of interesting toys and many curious non-toy goods. My family wasn't dirt poor but we never had much. My mother used to joke about having a fur coat. Whenever anyone would ask her what she wanted as a gift she would say, "How about a nice fur coat?" Even at six years old I knew this was a pipe dream. Movie stars had fur coats but I had never seen one anywhere I had been. My Aunt Bertha had one of those mink stoles that still had on its head and feet as morbid decoration. The little glass eyes were as lifeless as dolls' eyes. The mouth had a hinge device that would clip on to the middle of the stole to hold it in place like a weird long dog chasing its tail. Aunt Helen had an ancient blond stole in the classic short cape style. They wore these like Olympic metals lauding their excellence in marriage. However these were not fur "coats." There was enough fur involved to make them seem above our lowly family but. not enough to raise them to the status of movie stars no matter how they perceived themselves. At the penny sale the year I was seven I was stunned to find a full-length raccoon coat hanging on the rack with all the other plain cloth coats. It was in the style of the 1920's and may have even belonged to a man. In 1962 no one, not even some of my mother's bizarre friends would have worn this coat. But I was seven and to me it was my mother's dream come true. I tentatively looked at the price tag fully believing that it would be over my twenty-five-cent budget. I fumbled around the huge coat and finally found a white ticket that showed a price of ten cents. I was flabbergasted! Here was this perfectly fury coat in a size that appeared large enough to fit my mother and it was within my budget! I was so excited but still in disbelief I asked the attendant if this coat was indeed ten cents. The woman smiled and said, "yes." In rapped enthusiasm I told her my mother had always wanted a fur coat. The woman must have known how serious I was because she didn't laugh or try to discourage me. I handed her my dime and did not even look for other treasures. I had to lug my gift home seven blocks. It was a warm day in May and this coat weighted a ton. I decided to wear it down Lovejoy. I had to hold it up so it didn't drag on the ground. I walked like a young queen holding up her trailing gown down the main street of my neighborhood and world. I never suspected that I looked ridiculous... in my mind I was a glamorous movie star. I was wearing a beautiful fur coat that I would present to my mother as the best gift she had ever gotten from anyone. My second sister Joan worked at Petrucci's Dry Cleaning on Lovejoy and Davey. Because the day was unseasonably warm Joan and Mrs. Petrucci were standing out in front of the store enjoying the weather. As I approached down Lovejoy three blocks away Joan squinted in my direction, pointed at a gigantic ball of hair lumbering down the street and said, "Look at that big ugly dog coming down the street!" When I saw her I began to run excitedly to show her my find. As I got closer she corrected her first observation. "Oh no! That's not a big ugly dog... that's my little sister!" I got home while my mother was cooking dinner. I wonder what passed through her mind when her 7-year-old daughter stepped in the door dressed in what must have looked like a large animal carcass. It is not surprising that Irene never wore that coat in public. I asked her why she never wore it every now and then until 1 forgot or maybe realized why. She always said she was saving it for a special occasion. A special occasion in my house was rare so it seemed feasible to my 7-year-old mind. She finally got her fur coat in her early 40's and subsequently sold it at a consignment shop years later. And, even though she threatens now and again... she still hasn't sold me to the ragman. |