Can you recall exactly when a story has begun? Can you say, "This story begun here!" and go forward without any explanation necessary of where various parts came into play? As I read the book my eldest daughter compiled for me (and avoid the phone messages and emails from the attorney general's office, lawyers giving me their opinion, emails denying any knowledge, messages of "no comment" etc...) I laugh as I know, "the rest of the story" or the "real story" or sometimes wonder, "what the heck?" on stories I don't know about at all!
Each of them weave in and out of others so I am unsure of how to tell the rest of the story, answering questions asked and half told tales. All I can say is that for now, this is how I will try to do it. I am sure I will hear from you if you are not satisfied. Remember, you asked and you know you are a part of it so you cannot complain that I am, "telling tales out of school" as Grandma Bea would complain.
I was the eldest of five siblings, now the eldest of four. We lost one soul to drugs. Her body remains to plague us at the oddest times but the soul we loved is long gone, leaving behind a crazed being who has the memories of the playmate we grew up with but uses them in vile ways to pounce when we are often at our most vulnerable.
Living next door to us was my mother's younger sister who had four children and the nine of us made up a pack who ran (or so it seemed to us) 19th street on Irving. All the neighbors knew us by name, and they were all Mrs. this or Mr. that, no first names used.
Our dearest neighbors were the Gilleses. Mr. Gilles was the "head custodian" of Central School and later the Junior High School where our grandfather worked, after retiring from 25 years in the Coast Guard. Mrs. Gilles had polio and sat forever in a wheel chair. They both had nothing but kind words for us children. Their daughter, Pam and Gale, were (on the rare occassions that our parents went out) our babysitters. Mr. Gilles took great care of Mrs. Gilles and would always bring her outside on sunny days. Their home sat at the very top of 19th street, up a very steep driveway. His yard was straight down and he would use a rope to mow it, lowering the mower down and pulling it back up with the rope.
We had a HUGE apple tree in our yard which gave us the best apples. Small and crunchy, mostly sweet but just enough bitter to make the taste last a bit longer. In the corner of our picketed yard was a tall, tall, yew tree. In the winter time it would freeze and the top would droop over from the weight of the frost until it looked like a question mark.
A spring ran through our side yard and down into our basement, which was partially cement and partially mud until my father "finished it". Our house started out one floor, one bedroom, with an unfinished basement and an attic. When we moved, almost a dozen years later, the house was two stories with a finished basement, five bedrooms, a dining room, t.v. room and living room. We have all said, many times, that the stupidest thing we ever did was sell that house.
It was built in 1924ish, we found a newspaper in the attic once which had a date of the '20s on it. Long gone now. It was bigger on the inside than it looked on the out. You know those kinds of houses. The kind of house that you lived in when you were young and was so very big but when you go back now it is so very tiny.
The inside of our house contained pirates' ships and wonderlands. Wherever our children's imaginations fell short our father filled in for us most adeptly. The three-toe man waited fiendishly every night to chomp off two of our toes if we left feet dangling out of the bed. Witchie Poo was in the closet, waiting to fly around the room. And in the basement lived the cat with the razor blade in its mouth!
For years we only had three bedrooms. One bedroom for mom and dad. One bedroom for me and d with the other three sharing. As we grew the configurations would change. Mom and Dad gave up the master bedroom for the four girls, the lone boy had the middle room (which the stairs came up into and there was no privacy, with mom and dad taking the much smaller end room.
In the summer time the upstairs was hot and humid. There were only two windows in the whole of it and the doors would have to left open of the master bedroom and the small bedroom in order for a cross breeze to get through. In the winter we had heat from the wood stove in the basement. A real wood stove. The kind with a tinder box, an oven, hotplates on top that you lifted up with a tool. It made the best chili and corn bread. We knew it was the woodstove because our mother, um, well, she lacked necessary time it took to properly cook on an electric stove (that must be it, she still likes to cook "cajun").
Our yard seemed so very HUGE. In the back was a HUGE fence and when we climbed it to peak over was a deep gully between our home and the homes down on Irving. The fence was lined with morning glories, which made the best "squash bombs" a kid could want. Much better than water balloons, you never had to ask if you could have a squash bomb fight, it "just happened".
Along the fence neighboring the McDonalds (a strange, recluse, couple who we rarely saw but heard on occassion when she was yelling at him as he departed hastily from the home), was a thick laurel hedge, which we refered to as money trees. The leaves financed our "stores" and were our "loot" in our bank and train robberies. We also used the leaves as tacos, plates, hats and a variety of other foods. No matter how many leaves we picked those bushes never went bare.
Our apple tree was our constant companion. It's limbs were low enough for even the smallest of us to start up it, yet at the top it was even with our roof. It was out pirate's ship when the wind blew or it was an exotic tree in the tropics when we played Tarzan. We hung rope swings from its boughs and had small platforms for temporary tree forts. Because it was a fruit bearing tree we didn't put nails into it or weaken its limbs (much, just 14-20 kids clambering all over it, jumping, hopping and leaping).
Also in our yard was a whirli-bird, a swings set and slide with a glider, a sand box which (when covered) could also act as a stage, a camillia bush, various flower gardens (trampled), sometimes vegetable gardens, dogs, cats, rabbits, stray hamsters, deer, moles, possum, raccoons, and children, more children and then some more children. Oh yes, and bikes and balls. Every sort of sport equipment that was possible to have in the sixties. Skateboards, mitts, footballs, baseballs, basketballs, hoops, ping-pong tables, those little shorty pool tables, anything and everything.
We were surrounded by woods. Neither the Mean People, nor the Nice People had built their homes yet and all that land was woods. Our neighbors were the Riggs, the Pattersons and the Grahams (aside from the McDonalds and our aunt). After the Riggs moved the Vetriceks moved in and after them Perry and his chows. And for now, I will leave it at that.
