I Remember, I Confess (ch. 1-23)

Foreword

This is a true story as told from the eyes of the child, teen, young adult and messed up adult I have become, as remembered through the corridors of my life. I attempt to tell my story with honesty, and yes, with shocking truths which may severely offend or stun the reader. This book is not the stuff of fiction, although many have said it will be interpreted as such. I have “seasoned and flavored” some of the events with dialog and reminiscences I’ve tried to remember from my diminishing recall, but I assure you, it is true to all the best of my recollections. I have changed the names of the people, and places involved in my life story because they are as much innocent pawns of the capriciousness of life as we all have been, and do not want to hurt nor offend any. Those who have been part of this journey will know of the places and people of which I write. I will not try to hide the things I’ve experienced. I will be, as the story develops, openly truthful about sexuality, violence, and a host of disturbing experiences which some readers may not be able to handle. The experiences I relate will be graphic in detail. I feel this literary journey will at once cause laughter, fond reminiscences, warm emotions, and yes, shock and pain and tears. But these are the things which define our lives, and so, without further adieu, I offer…

I REMEMBER, I CONFESS

By James Allen

(Chapter 1)

        In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. A bit later, He created me, and I’ve really made a mess of things.

        I was born the second of eight kids to a devastatingly handsome Italian Dad, and a porcelain-skinned Native-American beauty the likes of which will never be replaced. We were termed “stair-step” children, since my parents churned out kids much like General Motors and Ford cranked out automobiles on an assembly line, one right after another. In descending order, there was Joe, then myself, then Jerry,  Jala, Jolene, Jada, Jack, and finally, Jonelle. A child of the sixties, I was weaned on “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and “Leave it to Beaver”, America’s social conscience broadcast in black and white, brought to you by “Lucky Strike” cigarettes and “Alka-Seltzer”.

        I’m not sure when anyone really starts “remembering” their lives, but growing up in the upper Great Lakes region was as typical a beginning as any in America, I guess. The “Space Race” with the USSR was just heating up, as was Vietnam, and we had just elected a cool President by the name of John F. Kennedy.

        In my earliest remembrances, we lived on “Elm” street, in a modest 2-story house, and we had an elderly “authentic” Italian woman living in a bungalow in our backyard. She was the real deal too. Dark, somber “sack-dresses” with a shawl over her head and shoulders, as she nurtured, pruned and tended to her herb garden and gigantic, succulent tomatoes as red as our cheeks when she’d pinch us. “Ol’ Lady Nana” Dad used to call her, and to a wide-eyed kid, she was as close to Mafia as I could imagine. Scared the hell outta me.

        In those days they used to actually deliver milk to our house, as I recall early mornings being awakened by the tinkling and clinking of the bottles in the milkman’s metal basket as he’d drop off fresh bottles of milk and haul away the empties dad or mom would leave out on the porch the night before. Mmm, that milk was nectar of the gods when you poured it over some “Kellogg’s Corn Flakes”, or a bowl of “Rice Krispies”, almost drowning your own ear as you’d lean over the bowl to hear if they really did “Snap, Crackle, and Pop”.

(Chapter 2)

        While living on Elm street, mom and dad brought home their third “bundle of joy” “Jerry”, another son alongside “Joe”, my older brother, and myself, and according to the way mom cooed and fussed over him with his head full of curls, and rosy cheeks, he actually may have been an angel, like she was always telling everyone. Well, angels walked around in the fiery furnace in my old Bible stories, didn’t they? So, early one morning, when it was still dark, little pyromaniac me was up playing around with matches, and Jerry was all snuggled in his crib. Underneath, on the floor were some folded comforters that had tasseled edges, so I sat down Indian-style and proceeded to light the tassels and quickly blow them back out again, reveling in the glow of fire and the tingle of danger I held in my chubby little fingers.

        Growing bored of these little conflagrations, I toddled off with my “fire sticks” to find something more manly to ignite, when in just a short time I noticed a golden-orange glow reflecting off the bedroom wall. I turned in mute horror to see the whole tasseled comforter smoldering like a lumberjack’s campfire out in the north woods, the flames licking up towards the bottom of Jerry’s crib!

        With a tiny whimper, and a heart racing like a formula one Lotus, I ran into our bathroom and turned on the cold water, grabbed my little green plastic sippy-cup and began running back and forth, throwing insignificant drizzles of water on the growing inferno, all the while whimpering under my breath and mewing in panic.

        My firefighting efforts were no match for the flames, and I was all set to scream, when dad must have heard my whimperings, and smelled smoke, because he and mom came crashing into the bedroom, staring aghast at the scene before their bloodshot, sleep-dazed eyes. Mom screamed, “Jerry!”, as she braved the fire and snatched him out of the crib by one arm, and dad picked up the burning blanket and threw it into the bathtub, drowning the flames in a cascade of cold water.

        I lost count of the number of swats I got, but I kinda think I got more than Jesus did when they flogged him…was that 39 or 40 lashes?

(Chapter 3)

        During the years on Elm street, Dad worked 2 jobs, his main field being that of brakeman on the railroad. He sometimes would take us boys to the switching yard when he’d pick up his paycheck, and we’d get to sit in those huge behemoth locomotives as they’d shuffle ore cars around the maze of licorice-whip tracks, getting loaded cars ready to journey south to the steel mills around the Great Lakes. In a kid’s eyes, he was sort of like the Paul Bunyan of the rails.

        His sideline job was as a truck driver. His dad had given him a fire-engine red Ford dump-bed truck with red stake sides, and dad would go around to the downtown stores to haul off bulk trash for them and deposit it in the city dump just outside of town. I’d sometimes make the trip with him, and remembered the acrid smell of burning trash, the smoldering heaps of garbage sending black smoke tendrils trailing skyward. Imagine my amazement when I’d see a black bear rummaging through the trash, gorging on someone’s leftovers that found their way from some kids unfinished dinner plate, into the slathering bear’s ferocious maw.

        Behind the bench seat of Dad’s truck he kept a tool box full of manly and menacing-looking instruments, such as saws, hammers, ratchet drill and metal framing square, which to a kid seemed an awesomely effective tomahawk or boomerang. And if a kid like me saw them this way, why wouldn’t my neighborhood “tribesmen” see them the same and maybe pay good money to play with these “toys”?

        So, on a bright early summer Saturday morning, this young entrepreneur wrestled Dad’s tool box out of his red truck into my own little red “Radio-Flyer” delivery wagon, and went door-to-door “renting” out tools as toys. When I had no more tools to rent, it was time for this little “Rockefeller” to enjoy the fruits of his labors.

        A few blocks down from our house, there was a corner grocery store run by two old Paisano Italians. The place had huge store-front panes of glass, and a cheerful, striped awning they’d unfurl each morning at opening time. When you walked in the door, your nostrils were assailed by the enticing aromas of fresh cheeses, salamis, porketta, and a host of fresh fruits, all begging to be sampled. The floors were hardwood that had all the finish scuffed off from years of shuffling Italian grandmother feet, shifting here and there throughout the store, testing the freshness of a plum, or the ripeness of a tomato.

        With eyes aglaze at the promise of sweet treats I had so vigorously earned by the sweat of my young brow, I wantonly and wildly amassed a huge bag of candies and dreamsickles and pop, and like a drug addict, immediately sat on the curb in front of the store to get my “fix”.

        As I was greedily “mainlining” my score orally, I guiltily looked down the street towards our house, and noticed the long, black snout of dad’s Mercury Montego nudging out from the stop sign on Elm. My mind recoiled in fear as I imagined dad bellowing about “where the hell are all my tools?” as he came roaring towards me.

        Not wanting to miss a single morsel of my treats before certain annihilation swooped down upon me, I started gorging and stuffing and cramming every last bit of candy I could into my “chipmunk-bag” cheeks, almost choking on so much gooey goodness coating the back of my throat while tears strained to burst from my bulging eyes.

        Dad’s big black car screeched to a halt, just inches before the chrome teeth of the huge grill and bumper smashed me into pulp, spilling the contents of my guts into the street like a burst-open pinata. I imagined myself splayed out in front of the car, with dad standing over me, arms crossed over his barrel chest as he laughed and grinned while the neighborhood kids pawed through my entrails like carrion birds picking out undigested bits of candy.

        After the licking I took for that episode, I wonder if it wouldn’t have been a fairer punishment.

(Chapter 4)

        Typically, in most families, sibling rivalry is a normal, healthy growth process, but ours was not a typical family I would surmise. I offer exhibit “A”.

        Our 2-story home on Elm Street had stairs from the kitchen to the bedrooms on the second floor. At the top of the stairs ran a short hallway or gantry alongside the stairwell, with a low railing to protect anyone from falling onto the stairs.

        One fateful morning, my brother Joe and I were playing with cars in this area, and as I screeched and careened through mind-bending chicane curves in my “Gran Prix at Monaco” race, Joe was sitting on the railing, trying to kick my cars and make me “spin-out”. As I angrily looked up at him while he sat there grinning at my defeats, I suddenly leapt up and lunged at him, pushing him over the railing. His legs flew past my face as he took a free-fall almost all the way to the bottom of the stairs, crashing onto them. There was a deafening crack or pop as he hit the stairs and bounced onto the kitchen floor below, screaming in agony and terror like a wounded beast in the forest, awakening the whole house, and quite possibly the neighbors for several blocks around.

        It turned out that his leg was severely broken, nearly at the hip, and he was in a cast from hips to toes for a very long time. I’m lucky I wasn’t in a full body-cast or body-bag, by the time dad AND mom got through with me.

(Chapter 5)

        As the time drew near for me to start Kindergarten, so too did the time for the horrors awaiting all children of the 60’s. The trip to the Health Department for the torture of vaccinations. Diphtheria, Polio, Measles, Rubella, Smallpox, you name it, you had to get a shot for it.

        The local Health Department was only a block away from our house, and as mom walked me there, I felt like a condemned inmate walking the “green mile”. As we opened the door to the red brick house of horrors, my senses were reeling at the sounds and smells that attacked me. The simpering cries of children, skewered with 16-penny nails by gargantuan Nazi Uber-nurses, whose white nylons swished eerily, seemingly whispering of the enjoyment they would know as they punctured and eviscerated us, and the smells of industrial strength disinfectants and rubbing alcohol making me nearly swoon.

        I dug my fingernails deep into the fabric of my mother’s double knit slacks, wrapping my arms tightly around her thigh, like a drowning man clinging to a piece of ship mast as the hull of my boat went down.

        Mom pried my numbing fingers from around her leg and handed me off to a “Green Bay Packer defensive lineman” dressed as a nurse, who unceremoniously plopped me down onto a wooden chair, which to my mind was hooked up to 50,000 volts of electricity, just waiting to fry me. Another “Packer defenseman” held me down as the other nurse rolled up my sleeve to the shoulder, doused me with kerosene (rubbing alcohol on a cotton ball), and then grabbed a hammer and a nail and delightedly drove the nail into my shoulder, seemingly to me, all the way to my jugular vein. I screamed like a soldier wounded on the field of battle yelling for a medic, but assuredly, had he seen medics like these running towards him to tend his wounds, he would have rather just given up the ghost. I wonder if army medics give out lollipops after they treat the wounded?

(Chapter 6)

        After the excruciating torture of vaccinations, I was ready for the days of “matriculating monotony” to begin, so in the early days of September, with the trees changing into their bright gold and red autumn sweaters, my mother held my hand gently as she led me to my first day of school.

        Modina Elementary school was several blocks from home, a brown brick monolith with white window trim, situated in the middle of several acres of “No-Man’s Land” commonly referred to as “The Playground”. I imagined it as a “Prisoner of War Camp”, with machine-gun nests atop of the building, waiting to mow down escaping POW’s.

        Climbing the wide concrete steps in front of the school, my heart fluttered like a bird’s wings against it’s cage. I held my mother’s hand with a death-grip, as she led me down the long, sea-green painted corridors to the Kindergarten classroom, afraid of what might lay in store for me. And as I walked through the door to that classroom, all fear, all dread, all worry fled from me when I laid my eyes on an angel of God, my teacher, tending to the needs of her little flock of lambs.

        The classroom suddenly burst into glorious sunlight, and I heard “Handel’s Messiah” booming in my mind as Ms. Bensen beamed a smile at me and took my hand in hers, leading me to my little wooden desk, cooing to me, speaking softly and reassuringly that everything was going to be alright. And I believed her. I was “in love” at 5 years old.

(Chapter 7)

        Those early school days began to bring out the creative muse hidden inside me, and I relished the time for “art”. Finger-painting made me feel like Salvador Dali run amok, and I loved the arts & crafts we created too. Macaroni spray-painted gold and glued to a paper plate, or our little hands immortalized in plaster, like movie stars on the Hollywood “Walk of Fame”. Either that or I just loved the taste of paste.

        One day, Ms. Bensen handed out big sheets of that old cream-colored construction paper, and boxes of crayons, and gave us an art assignment. She wanted us to draw a picture of our mothers. With all the skill and talent of a Michaelangelo, or a Rembrandt, I closed my eyes, and envisioned my mom, putting big, fat Crayola crayon to paper to create my masterpiece, my version of “The Madonna”.

        When I brought my drawing home that afternoon, my mother sat on her kitchen chair, gazing at it with a huge beaming smile, as tears welled in her eyes. She pulled me close, and hugged me very tightly, and said, “You even remembered every bit of clothing I was wearing this morning when you went to school! You’re amazing!” She was right. I still remember what she wore that day. A big old,  baggy brown sweatshirt and some black stirrup pants with white ankle socks and black canvas deck shoes. I drew her exactly as I had remembered. In all my life, I think that was one of the best hugs I’ve ever received.

        Mom saved that drawing, along with all her most cherished children’s creations, in a beautiful cedar “Hope-chest” until her dying day. I’m not sure, but I think that my sister may have all those creations stashed in her own belongings now, keeping the legacy and memory of our Mom alive for the next generation of “Rembrandts” to try and top.

(Chapter 8)

        By the time I hit Kindergarten, mom and dad’s family had blossomed into a family of 5. My two eldest sisters were born in that time, and mom primped and preened on them like little princesses. Jala and Jolene were perfect replicas of the dark-haired, dark-eyed progenitors that were mom and pop. What we may lack in wealth or station in life has been more than amply adjusted for by the dashing handsomeness and eye-popping beauty of the men and women of our family.

        As the household burgeoned, we began to outgrow our little place on Elm street, so it was time to find a larger home. The move took place in spring of 1966, and brought us into a huge 2-story house in an area of town known as “Section 25”, a nice location situated near some pine-covered hills which most flatlanders would call mountains. I’m not positive, but I think it got it’s name because of the iron ore which was mined in the area, and to be sure, all around us were old mine shafts and pits, and just down “Kenny” street stood the largest machine this kid had ever laid his eyes upon.

        It was called “The Cornelle Pump”, a hulking, rusting prehistoric beast that rose out of the ground, a pump to extract water from the underground iron mines so the miners wouldn’t drown as they pick-axed and dynamited ore from the bowels of the earth. But to a wild imagination like mine, this was none other than Tyrannosaurus Rex, and it was my job to explore his domain and learn his weaknesses, to vanquish him, much like Don Quixote slaying his windmill dragons.

        My brother Joe and I began exploring this new neighborhood much like Lewis and Clark explored in earlier times, discovering abandoned mine shafts, playing “Cowboys and Indians” in the rugged, wooded hills all around us, and tabling in our memories every delicious apple tree in our neighbor’s yards.

        When winter approached, we delighted in the steep hilly terrain, which afforded us sledding thrills the likes of which only Olympic Luge and Bobsled competitors could know. The speeds were mind-boggling and eye-watering, and we would have stayed at it until hypothermia had it’s way with us, if not for mom’s “screech-owl” screams each night for us to “get home before you freeze to death!”

(Chapter 9)

        I was growing into a young man by now, and for some inexplicable (and disgusting) reason, I started noticing girls as something more than just “icky nuisances”. Across the street from our house, on a corner lot, lived two girls about the same age as myself, Patty and Penny. Patty was the older of the two, and to my “artist’s eye”, the more aesthetically pleasant to look upon. She had thick, long, golden tresses cascading down past her shoulders, and when she’d laugh and toss her hair, I would almost snap my own neck as my eyes would follow the path of her flowing mane in the bright spring sunlight.

        Being the dashing and debonair swinger I had become through my years of love for my Kindergarten teacher, it was my aim to “track and bag” Patty. I was constantly trying to win her affections by pulling her hair and running away, or throwing “cocklebur” berries, or pickers, as we called them, into her long locks, causing tangled snarls.

        My efforts seemed to be working, as there were times we’d swing on their swingset, and laugh, and have contests to see how high we each could go, and being the daredevil I was, I’d fly as high as possible and launch myself out into space, much like a “Human Cannonball” in the circus, trying to make perfect pin-point landings like a graceful gymnast, and thus win the”gold-medal” of Patty’s heart.

        But one morning, when I came bounding down our front steps to rendezvous with Patty for a “hot swing-set session”, my heart crashed to the ground and the bile of jealousy rose into my mouth as I saw my younger brother Jerry (the Angel), laughing merrily alongside Patty on my swing. MY swing! That was MY place next to Patty! She was supposed to be MY “swinging partner”!

        Without thinking, I skulked over to our driveway, which in the “Great White North” was strewn with flat, smooth-edged Petoskey stones, and picked one up that fit my hand just right. Now, seemingly all young boys who had ever played sand-lot baseball, have envisioned themselves as world-class, Major League pitchers, or possibly have imagined themselves as mighty prehistoric hunters, able to bring down wild beasts with the mighty throw of a stone, and I was such a visionary as well.

        I drew a bead on my prey across the street, and let my rock fly with all the might of David hurling his stone  at Goliath’s gigantic frame, and the instant the stone left my fingers, I knew (in panic) that my aim was true.

        The smooth stone rocketed gracefully in a high, right-to-left parabola, and with my mind’s lightning-fast calculations, I watched almost in slow-motion, as it re-entered earth’s atmosphere like a Titan II missile, knowing it would find it’s mark.

        I could not have timed my throw more perfectly, as the stone intersected with Jerry’s forehead right at the top of his forward swinging momentum, the impact driving him backwards out of the swing in a reverse somersault, splaying him out in the dust like a rag doll.

        For a brief instant, I surveyed the scene of the carnage I had wrought, but as soon as I heard Jerry’s scream, and saw the blood fountain from his forehead as he raised from the dirt, I lit out like a “turpentined-cat”, knowing a sure and swift retribution was soon forthcoming for me.

        And assuredly, it came, in the form of a thick, wooden cutting board which hung on a nail in mom’s kitchen. It was about a half-inch thick with a handle, much like a big squared ping-pong paddle, with a hand-painted picture of a rooster as decoration.

        That rooster pecked a lot of hide from my backside. I hated him…

(Chapter 10)

        Another incident wherein my “pitching prowess” brought Mr. Rooster and I back together again, was not long after Jerry had somewhat recovered.

My dad owned a pair of Army regulation binoculars, or “field glasses” as they were sometimes called, and they were a cumbersome, heavy piece of military equipment, ostensibly made heavy and strong to endure the rigors of the combat battlefield. Those babies were rugged, to be sure, attested to by the scratches and dings they sported like medals on the breast of a general’s uniform.

        From our upstairs bedroom window, my older brother Joe and I were “reconnoitering” the neighborhood, sweeping the DMZ of “Section 25” for Viet Cong infiltrators, better known as “VC sappers”, hell-bent on infiltrating our “Forward Observation Base” and wreaking havoc on our hallowed United states.

        As we took turns “glassing” the area, we would call in “fire-missions” via a pair of cheap walkie-talkies I had received as a Christmas gift that previous December. To a battle-tested soldier such as myself, they were the life-line of communication during my many excursions into hostile, enemy territory.

        When it was still my turn to “spot” the enemy with the binoculars, it was supposed to be Joe’s turn to call down “Death from Above”, artillery bombardment from distant, hill-top “Fire-Bases”, hurling 105millimeter shells of HE (High-Explosive) onto the VC we had spotted attempting to over-run our encampments.

        Joe demanded it to be his turn to use the binoculars, but I adamantly refused, saying it was still my turn. When he threatened to “kick my ass” if I didn’t give him the “glasses”, my recollections of previous “ass-whippings” at his hand sprang up in my mind. But, with the heroism, and bravado inherent in all soldiers welling up in my “pigeon-chested” manliness, I brazenly stood my ground.

        I stood back from the bedroom window, and with the iron will of a Vietnamese prison camp detainee, determined to give only name, rank and serial number, I puffed out my scrawny, sunken chest (pitifully, as far as it would go), and shouted, “NO! It’s still my turn!”

        Unfortunately, my pigeon-chest did not instill any fear, nor even the remotest amount of respect from my big brother, because he started from across the bedroom to assuredly “kick my ass”, so in a last, battlefield act of valor, like throwing myself on a grenade, or running headlong into a VC machine-gun nest to hurl a “satchel-charge” at the enemy, I yelled with a vicious war-cry and flung the binoculars at Joe as hard as I could. And once again, my aim was impeccable, as the heavy, steel-lined field glasses met, yet again, the left forehead of another brother.

        His legs buckled, like a boxer knocked out on his feet from a roundhouse right, and he crumpled to the ground as if he had no bones in his body, flopping to the floor like a sodden pile of wet laundry.

        Needless to say, I did not stick around this time to survey the damage, or even find out if Joe was conscious, knowing all to well what surely lay ahead, so I beat a hasty retreat, to hide behind the safety of my sister’s bedroom door.

        When Joe ran crying downstairs to mom and dad, with blood pouring from the huge crescent-moon shaped gash caused by the front ocular, mom screamed in panic, while dad just hollered, “Son of a BITCH!” and came stampeding up the stairs like a crazed buffalo, looking to gore the Indian who had stuck him with his puny arrow.

        I heard dad slam open the door to us boys’ bedroom, and yell my name, but there was no way in hell I was going to answer that summons. In retrospect, I probably should have, because the punishment may have been less, as he then came barreling to the girl’s door and kicked it open, like a “G-man” in a raid.

        The door snapped open with all the force as if blown off it’s hinges by a charge of dynamite, and swung back, slamming me in the face and squashing me against the wall like a pitiful little housefly smashed to goo by a flyswatter. I crumpled to the ground with a lot less grace and manly dignity than Joe had from his wound.

        But yet again, that wasn’t enough, as once more, I had my intimate rendezvous with Mr. Rooster, even after I was already “out on my feet.”  I STILL hate that rooster…

(Chapter 11)

        As memory serves, during Mother’s Day of 1967, our family, and all mom’s sisters and children gathered at grandma’s place, which they used to do on a fairly regular basis, giving all us cousins the chance to romp and play and generally terrorize the neighborhood while the womenfolk visited, and the menfolk hit the taverns around town.

        In late afternoon, my cousin Alonzo and I were playing “bullfight” in grandma’s living room, each taking turns being the bull or the matador, using a big towel as the matador’s cape. As the bull, we would stomp and scrape the floor with our “hooves”, snorting madly, and using our index fingers at our temples as our mighty horns, we would speed madly across the room, determined to wreak havoc and mayhem on the antagonistic matador.

        During one of my turns as the bull, I was totally focused on goring my cousin and grinding him into dust as I scraped, snorted, and stomped the floor. I put my horns next to my temples, bent at the waist, and charged the matador.

        Not realizing my peril, when I roared towards Alonzo, he deftly stepped aside my charge, waving his “cape” with a flourish. To my suddenly dawning terror, once he had stepped aside, I barreled into grandma’s storm door, an old-style “french door” with eight thick, leaded square panes of glass. I had only enough time to stick my left arm out to try and stop myself, but stop, I did not. My arm crashed through a pane of glass, and the door popped open, spilling me onto grandma’s front porch.

        I was momentarily dazed at what had just happened, but once I noticed blood spurting from my wrist like “Spiderman” shooting his webs, I let out a high-pitched scream that probably burst the eardrums of every dog within earshot, and with each spurt of blood, added another scream in synchronized timing with the flow.

        When my mom and aunts heard my screams, they came running to see what catastrophe had yet again befallen one of their kids. And once they saw the carnage, they all went into “emergency management” mode, my aunt Constance grabbing a cloth diaper to apply direct pressure to the severed artery in my wrist, and aunt Lucinda starting to call around the local taverns to find the husbands, since they had taken all the family vehicles, leaving us all stranded at grandma’s. Personally, I now surmise they took all the cars so the women couldn’t track them down while they were on their “benders”, but I digress.

        Since there were no vehicles to rush me to the hospital, my aunts decided to call a taxi, explaining the emergency and our lack of funds to call an actual ambulance. Aunt Constance kept a firm grip on my wrist as the cab driver raced us to the local county hospital emergency room.

        I was still screaming and writhing in pain and terror as the nurses and doctor plopped me onto the emergency room table, and because of my incessant gyrations, they applied restraints so the doctor could tend to my wound.

        As the hospital staff was caring for me, I just kept screaming, but when I saw the hypodermic needle the doctor picked up to anesthetize my wrist, my screams became even louder and more hysterical as he injected it directly to my wound.

        I was frantically struggling to get away from the pain of the needle and the wound itself, but the restraints held me fast, allowing these sadistic torturers to have whatever way with me they wished. My only defense was my glass-shattering, high-pitched screams.

        When I felt I would go insane from this horrific treatment, I heard a “SSSHHHhhh, Jimmy”, from the emergency room door. I snapped my head to the right to see who had said that, and saw my uncle Flynn in the doorway, finger pursed to his lips.

        “Jimmy,” he whispered. “If you’ll be good and let the doctor take care of you, I’ll take you to A & W when we’re all done, okay?”

        A & W?!? Wow! To us kids, a trip to the A & W Root Beer stand with uncle Flynn was a very special treat. Oftentimes he would pile a whole slew of us into his miniscule Chevrolet Vega, like old-time college students cramming into a phone booth, and he’d take us to the A & W for root beers. Depending on how old you were, this dictated the size of root beer you could get. The younger kids got the “baby-sized” frosty mugs, the middle kids got mediums, and the more “mature” rug-rats got the large. You had to be pretty much a fully-fledged adult to get the “holy grail” of A & W root beers, the “Jumbo” mug.

        Whatever size mug of that deliciously thirst-slaking nectar might be my reward for calming down, the promise of it was enough to stop my screams and thrashings. In fact, you would almost have thought I had gone comatose as I lay there like a corpse while the doctor put eight stitches into my wrist, looking to me like Betsy Ross sewing “Old Glory” instead of a gash in my arm.

        Once I was sewn up and bandaged, true to his word, uncle Flynn took me, by myself, to the root beer stand, all the while praising me for being a strong and brave young man through my ordeal. And he surely must have meant those words, because he bought me the “Jumbo.”

        Amazing, the miraculous healing powers of a root beer…

(Chapter 12)

        I’m not sure of the cause, whether it was the “micro-population explosion” occurring in our home, or the “group-consciousness” exploding all around us in the late 1960’s, but while still living at 705 Kenny Street, my older brother Joe began showing signs of rebellion and discontent.

        On a night in the autumn of 1967, he awakened me not long after our usual “Gestapo-mandated” bedtime in order to bid me goodbye and to instill in me his words of hard-learned wisdom. He told me he was running away and that it was now going to be my place to be the eldest son and to forge ahead proudly in the footsteps of “the ol’ man”, caring for the women-folk and the young in our family, whilst he journeyed onward alone to find his station in life.

        I sat up in bed, rubbing the sand of sleep from my eyes with gnarled fists, and noticed Joe was over by his bed, stuffing clothes and personal belongings into a pillow case. He kept spouting rhetoric about how the country was falling apart and the “Man” was fixin’ to get us all blown to hell, and how mom and dad were out of touch with what the hell was goin’ on out there.

        As I sleepily and dumbfoundedly watched this scene as if it were all a dream, Joe opened the window of our room, tossed the overstuffed pillowcase off the back porch roof, and climbed out to follow it. I trundled over to the window to watch him sidle off the edge of the roof, and drop to the ground, dimly reflected off the streetlights lining our street.

        He picked up his “duffle-bag” pillowcase and stood in the semi-shadows behind our house and said, “Be good Ezra! You’re the man of the house now!” And with those parting words, he skirted into the dark shadows and made his escape to parts unknown…

        I stood there for a long moment in mute silence, not really sure if this scenario had actually just happened, or if it was all some bad dream, like Ebenezer Scrooge blaming his “visions” on an undigested bit of beef, or underdone potato. But the longer I stood there, I became aware that this was real, and that Joe was really gone, that he had fled the family, and left me alone, without a big brother to lead me, and to guide me, and to protect me from the villainy of the schoolground bullies.

        My eyes began to well with burning pools of tears, causing me to see double and triple of everything around our bedroom, and I stumbled and felt my way out of the room, down the hall to the head of the stairs. I stood, leaning against the railing, hearing the muted laughter and monologue of “Johnny Carson and the Tonight Show” on our TV downstairs, trying with all my might to scream, but the scream was choked off by tears in my throat.

        All I could muster was a pitiful, “Mmmmumph! Ungkk, Ungkk! MmmmmUMMMPH!” But it must have been enough for my mom and dad to hear, because dad softly hollered, “Who the hell IS that?”

        But that was enough to break the log-jam of emotion that was stopped up in my gullet, because the tears came bursting forth in guttural sobs as I screamed and sobbed, “Joey ran awayyyyy!” and fell to my knees, blubbering and sobbing like a widow at a wake.

        Dad yelled, “WHAT?!?”, and mom cried “Moose!” (her pet name for my dad), as they both came flying up the stairs to see what really was the matter. They shot past me as if I was just a newel post on the railing, into our bedroom to find out if what I had spluttered were true, and as soon as dad saw the half-open dresser drawers and missing pillowcase from Joe’s bed, he lumbered down the stairs 3 at a time to go “round up his escaped prisoner”.

        He threw open the back door and took off into the darkness like the “Headless Horseman” looking for his head, off into night to find and bring back his recalcitrant first-born. And sure enough, he wasn’t long in catching up to, and recapturing his fledgling escapee, as he dragged Joe and his pitiful “hobo-kit” pillowcase back into the house through the back porch.

        Mom had in the meantime made a fresh percolator of coffee for the occasion, and when Joe came through the door, she screamed, “Joey! What are you doing?” as she fell on her knees to hug and hold her wayward baby chick. She was crying and smooching, and hugging him like he was the returning Messiah, but dad simply stormed out of the kitchen, muttering some strange things under his breath.

        He came thundering back into the kitchen with his old brown valise and slammed it down onto the kitchen table. He clicked it’s gold-plated latches and flipped it open on the table as he snatched up Joey’s “hobo-kit” pillowcase by the ears and began shaking the contents in a heap into the open valise.

        “You wanna get the hell out?” Dad thundered. “Well, hell, you don’t wanna look like a bum! Here! Walk out like a man! Here’s a goddamn suitcase for you to hit the road! You’re a man now, so a man should have a decent suitcase!”

        While dad was ranting and raving to Joey, mom knelt beside her son, looking up at dad as if he had gone berserk. Tears started streaming down her pale cheeks as she squeezed Joe in an octopus-death grip.

        “Moose! Stop it! He’s not going anywhere, so just stop it!” she cried as she wrapped Joey even tighter in her motherly tentacles.

        Dad didn’t even hear her, as he unceremoniously stuffed Joey’s things into the valise, forced down the lid, snapped the latches and handed it off to Joe. He took Joey from my mother’s arms as she protested, and pulled a couple dollars from his pocket. He walked Joey to the front door of our house, and said, “Never skulk away from anywhere Joseph. When you leave, walk out like a man.”  He gave Joey the valise, and handed him the money from his hand and said, “Write when you get where you’re going”, and sent Joe off into the darkness, bravely lugging the heavy valise with both hands.

        I couldn’t believe I had just witnessed this whole scene. Our own dad sending our brother off into the cruel world like that, but dad knew what he was doing.

        Mom was insane. She yelled and cried and screamed, but dad went and sat down with a cup of coffee and said “He’s growing up and getting independent. If you give it a half hour, I guarantee, he’ll either be back, or we’ll get a phone call about where he’s at.”

        And true to his word, Grandma called not long after saying Joey had shown up at her door with a suitcase and she demanded to know what the hell was going on. When mom and dad explained it to her, she kept Joe for the whole weekend, loving and smothering and nurturing him, and cramming the wayward bastard with all the sweet treats and cakes and pies that only a grandmother knows how to make, to make a kid feel loved.

Lucky son-of-a-bitch.

(Chapter 13)  

        By the time the decade of the 1960’s was closing, the United States had seen major changes in it’s social landscape. John Kennedy’s assassination, then Bobby’s, then Dr. King’s, and a host of other social issues seemed to be stretching this country to its limits. As the 60’s were reaching their zenith at a frenetic pace, so too, were my mother and father’s efforts at re-populating the planet single-handedly. In the short span of the years we lived on Kenny Street, Jada was born, and Jack was on the way.

        With the turbulence of the times and the economy, and with dad being the sole bread-winner in the home, we were at the point of relinquishing our big house and moving once again. In the summer of 1967, dad drove up to our house in a huge “Allied Van-Lines” 18-wheeled semi to begin the arduous task of moving his big family into yet another home.

               We all pitched in, packing our clothes and hauling boxes, making sure all our dearest childhood treasures made the journey safely. To dad’s boys, this was a huge adventure, becoming real “men”. And with fortitude and stoic good humor, we wrestled and man-handled boxes larger than our own diminutive frames into the “belly of the beast’ represented by the bowels of that semi. We painstakingly (with dad’s guidance), stored boxes of dishes, shuffled furniture, draped breakable mirrors, and generally made nuisances of ourselves in an effort to prove we were worthy of the name, “moving-men” to our dad.

When it seemed everything was stored in good order, dad hopped into the “captain’s chair” of the “Starship Allied Van-Lines”, with mom trailing behind in the “Star-shuttle” Chrysler station wagon, and we began our journey to parts unknown to us children. We traveled, it seemed to me, light years across space, crossing the dreaded “Chopin Pits”, submerged mine shafts which nearly swallowed half our town, doggedly fighting “Klingon battle-cruisers” as we made our way across the “Neutral-Zone” of my hometown.

         We came to a sweeping, left handed turn,  a seemingly impossible steep grade, which when calling upon my well-traveled mind, only the most seasoned of deep woods loggers and dog-sled  mushers may have risked, but dad jammed the gears of that semi like a long-haul trucker jacked up on a pot of coffee and 4 hits of speed, and he “put the pedal to the metal” and sliced across oncoming traffic like a madman hell-bent on making his time, and we roared up the steep slope of “J Street” seemingly without even dropping any RPM’s. I looked across the bench seat of that semi at my dad with a beaming smile of adoration and worship, and thought, “Is there anything my daddy can’t do?”

        As we wended our way further and further up the grade, I made a mental image of my surroundings, as a good tracker and woodsman should always do, noting landmarks, colors and styles of homes, and of course, the existence of gardens and apple trees I might plunder once we got settled.

        While I was tabling and storing my observations, I was pulled from my reverie by the hissing and shush of the semi’s air brakes, and as I looked to my right out the passenger window, I was pretty much crestfallen at the sight of the hovel in front of which dad had stopped. 847 East Y Street. A brown shingle-sided “shotgun-house”, so called because if you discharged a shotgun at the front door, you could hit anything all the way to the back of the house.

        My eyes looked over the door frame of the semi at these new and frightening surroundings, like a spaceman carefully surveying a strange new world, and I trembled at what might lay outside the safe confines of the “Starship Allied Van-Lines”.

        With a choked off cry I recoiled from the window as an alien in the form of Dot  La’Morfalo jumped up on my side of the truck and hollered, “Hey! Whatter you doin’? Are you movin’ in’?”

        This initial contact with another life-form snapped me out of my reverie, and I brazenly pulled the latch on the cabin of our starship, stepping out into the glorious sunlight of a new, vast and unexplored domain. Dot was as eager as a yearling pup to sniff and snort and get to know his new neighbors, and his eagerness was infectious to me.

        I said, “Hi! My name’s Ezra! What’s yours?” Hence the knowledge of his name, Dot, but I gotta tell ya, when an 18-wheeled starship comes cruising into your neighborhood, every kid in the vicinity is gonna come a’runnin’. And run they did, to find out who was invading their territory, whether they were hostiles or friendlies, whether there were girls, whether there were boys, and of what ilk these newcomers might be.

        As our clan piled out from the vehicles, all the neighboring tribes-children came scurrying to get the first glimpses of us newcomers to their native soil, much like the “Seminoles” may have peered through palm fronds at the appearance of Ponce de Leon  on their native shores in Florida. As we began unloading our “ship”, as it were, and distributing our cargo, the neighbor kids started helping haul our things into our new home, beginning the  joys of newfound friendships.

        Dot had a brother named Dwayne, and as we all toted boxes into our place, they continuously regaled us of the cool places to explore and play; the “woods” behind our house, a place of ominous and significant historical heritage called, “Big Rock”, the “Rat cavern” and “Wagebic Mine”, just a sampling of sites we would investigate in our coming years on Y Street. My “explorers mind” reeled at the promise of heady experiences I would soon enjoy. But the “piece de resistance” turned out to be an abandoned apple orchard not more than 200 yards from our new home.

        With the abandon of ship-bound sailors let ashore for ship’s-leave after months at sea, we quickly dropped the burdensome stocks and stores of our “starship” and ran off with our native guides to find the “fountains of youth” which beckoned.

(Chapter 14)

        As  the summer of 1968 began, so too, did our adventures in this new neighborhood. We spent those warm, sun-soaked days discovering hidden creeks and streams in the woods near our new home, and played “Army” or “Cowboys and Indians” among the whispering pines and massive hardwood trees.

        We also would “raid” the abandoned apple orchard, tucking our t-shirts into our jeans, and stuffing piles of apples into our shirts, to use as ammunition against cars from atop a large hill overlooking the highway.

        The “mountainous” terrain of the area afforded us “adrenaline-highs” as our whole neighborhood would gather at the top of “Lark Avenue” to have downhill races. All the kids would attend, bringing anything that had wheels as their modes of transportation. Someone would bring the typical “Radio-Flyer” wagon, while the true “daredevils” would ride the likes of shopping carts or homemade “chopper” bicycles, rickety, long-forked “banana bikes” as they were termed.

        Lark Avenue was about 4 blocks of asphalt, with a grade of about 35 degrees, and it emptied onto the main highway which sliced our town through the middle. If your “race-car” didn’t have brakes, you’d either have to “wipe out” into the woods before you hit the bottom of the hill, or plant your feet and skid to a halt before you hit the highway and became a hood ornament or a bug splatted in the grill of a fast-moving Oldsmobile.

        Those were reckless times for us, as we’d rocket down that hill sometimes 8 or 10 abreast, shopping carts wobbling madly, choppers roaring, “Big Wheels” clickety-clacking, with the sidelines of spectator children yelling and jumping and cheering his or her brother (or sister) to victory.

        Around that time, I began to notice my mother’s hair was showing signs of a slight graying, and if I’m not mistaken, this was the same time she began taking prescription Valium, “for her nerves”.

(Chapter 15)

        As summer droned on into autumn, a new school year was set to begin, and I started attending “Priest Elementary”, a modern bastion of education set on a high plateau with acres of open field around it. From this mesa, you could look in any direction and see almost our whole town.

        I enjoyed many a game of marbles in the dirt outside the school, and rousing games of kickball on the baseball field that was part of the playground at “Priest”.

        Being a “newcomer” in class, as any transient kid would know, is a rite of passage not unlike enduring “The Spanish Inquisition”, and as I found my way to the 3^rd grade classroom and shyly edged my face around the door frame, all heads turned as a hushed silence began to flutter through the class. I screwed up my courage and bravely walked up to the teacher’s desk with my paperwork, all the while taking in my surroundings through veiled, slitted eyes.

        When I reached the teacher’s desk and held out my hand to give the new teacher my transfer papers, I was jolted from my “reconnoitering-mode” by the sweetest lilt of “Texas-drawl” my ears had ever heard, next to “Miss Kitty’s” on “Gunsmoke”, that is.

        “Well Hah, shugah!”, came the voice of this “un-soiled dove”. “Welcome to the 3^rd grade heah at Priest! Ah’m Ms. Beewalt. What’s yo’ name shugah?”

        I felt sweat trickle down the center of my spine, and a flush of red seemed to scald my cheeks as I gazed into the deepest pair of sea-green eyes ever set under a golden blond, beehive hairdo.

        I almost choked on  my own tongue as I tried to tell this goddess my name. I swallowed my yet unformed adam’s apple, and squeaked, “I’m Ezra.”

        “Well Ehhzra,” Miss Beewalt drawled, “It’s wuhn-da-ful t’have you in owwa class. Let me show you to yo’ desk.” And when she stood to lead me, she rose taller, and taller, and taller, like a skyscraper rising on the skyline of Dallas. She was indeed a voluptuous, Amazonian testament to the adage, “Everything’s bigger in Texas”.

        She wore a beige skirt zipped at the side, and a cream colored, shimmery blouse which strained at a place a young boy like me knew nothing about yet, but something stirred in a lower region of my body as I walked behind this monument to feminine pulchritude. And as I swooned into my seat and she walked back to her desk, all former thought, all love, all boyish lust for my old flame Miss Bensen, burst into flame and disappeared in a puff of smoke and the scent of “Cover-Girl” makeup which Miss Beewalt wore so stunningly.

        I was, once again, smitten by love.

(Chapter 16)

        In my early years, I used to rummage through my mother’s collection of photos she had amassed, browsing the history of our family indelibly recorded on black and white Kodak film. There were pictures of my mother when she was a little girl, and shots of dad during some of his excursions into the forests to hunt and fish, and I would imagine I was with him, out in the wilds, man against nature.

        During my eighth year, I got the opportunity to do exactly that. Dad packed his fishing and camping gear, fly rods, tackle and an old  wicker fishing creel that smelled of sweet grasses and long-ago eaten trout, and then he beckoned for my older brother Joe and I to get in the car because we were going camping with him.

        I was ecstatic! My first camping trip with my dad! What adventures we would have! Pitching a tent, cooking over a real campfire, matching our skills against a wise and wily trout in some far-off, roiling river or stream! Now I would become a man!

        When dad had driven for what seemed endless miles, delving deeper and deeper into the north woods, we finally stopped in the midst of the forest, surrounded by acres and acres of tall pines, whispering and swaying in breezes, and dad instructed Joe and myself in the art of setting up camp.

        He showed us how to pitch and rope off a tent, and how to gather kindling and bigger branches and logs for our campfires, as Joe and I avidly followed dad’s expert advice. In no time at all, we were settled in at our campsite, feeling like old pioneers, rugged men who had conquered this mighty forested land.

        Around mid-afternoon, dad declared that he was heading down the river to do some trout fishing, and that Joe and I should tend the campsite, and fish nearby. Dad then slipped on his chest-high rubber waders and grabbed his fly-rod and creel and tackle box, and stepped out into the fast-moving dark waters, easily forging downstream, until he disappeared around a bend in the river, leaving Joe and myself alone in the deep wilderness, comforted only by the glow and crackle of our campfire.

        We relished the time, as young boys do, skipping stones atop the surface of the water, exploring the woods near our camp, trying (unsuccessfully) to land a record-breaking rainbow trout, until the light started to dim in the west, and the woods grew darker and seemingly more deep and ominous.

        I started to wonder where dad might be, and became a bit more worried as the sky turned soft pink and meandered into a deeper purple hue with each passing minute, the sky growing darker and darker as the sun settled beyone the unseen horizon.

        When it became apparent that dad had not come back yet, and Joe and I were alone in the dark woods and, I began to panic, and with ever-increasing decibel levels, began to call for our dad.

        “Daaaad-eeeee! Daaaaaaad! Where are Youuuuuu?!?” I yelled, my voice echoing long though the woods. But when no reply came, my heart began to hammer in my chest, and I began to yell for him louder and longer.

        When it seemed I would lose my mind from fear, and my voice from yelling, my dad finally answered from around the bend from which he had disappeared endless eternity’s earlier, but he was not replying in kind and caring tones.

        “What the hell’s wrong with you? Why the hell you yelling like that? You spooked every trout from here to Canada, dumb-ass!” He yelled as he clambered up the grassy river banks with his rod and tackle.

        He threw his fishing gear angrily into the back of our station wagon, cussing under his breath, and then came and started dismantling our campsite, all the while muttering about how his “dumb-ass kid” wanted to ruin his fishing trip. I just stood there timidly shaking, watching him angrily wad up the tent and sleeping bags and haphazardly throw the stuff into the car. When he poured river water over the bed of coals in our campfire, it made a loud hissing like a snake, and we stood in darkness. I started to cry out loud at that time, and dad roughly snatched up my wrist and began half-dragging, half-lifting me by the arm towards the dim outline of our car, vowing, “Never again Ezra. This was your first, and last camping trip.”

        Well, it wasn’t my last camping trip, as I did many more camp-outs in my growing years, but if recollection serves me, it actually was the only one I ever went on with my dad. Oh, sure, there were day-excursions into the woods to fish or hunt, but there never was an actual camp-out again with my father.

        I guess an eight-year old is made of less rugged stuff than his “outdoorsman dad”.

(Chapter 17)

        During the years on “Y Street”, I got to know my neighborhood quite well, and became good friends with a kid named “Spike” Schwartz who lived about a block down the street. He and his sister had been adoptees, and possibly because of that, his parents spoiled him rotten. That kid had every new toy that came on the market, and his dad was a rabid Green Bay Packer fan. There was so much Packer “memorabilia” around Spike’s house, you’d have thought it was some sort of shrine to the likes of Bart Starr, Ray Nitschke, and the god-like Vince Lombardi, the Knute Rockne of modern day pro football.

        Spike and I would spend many a sunny afternoon, calling plays from the line against imaginary Detroit Lion defensemen,(our most hated rivals), and either Spike or myself would run quick hitches or “long-bomb” pass patterns in the empty backyard of his next-door neighbor’s, the Deflorio’s, while the other of us as quarterback, would launch Spike’s official Green Bay Packer regulation football downfield for touchdowns, unfailingly wresting victory from the jaws of defeat to win SuperBowl after SuperBowl against unbeatable odds.

        On an early spring afternoon as we played, the Deflorio’s older son Martino, sat in their screened-in sun porch watching Spike and I play, as he sipped a cold bottle of pop. After several grueling plays against a formidable defense, Spike and I were catching our breath, bent over at the waist, hands on our knees, puffing and wheezing like true “gridiron gladiators”.

        From the shadows of the Deflorio’s sun porch, came the voice of Martino, “Hey! You’s guys wanna pop? You look like you’s could use one.”

        For some inexplicable reason, Spike just shook his head and picked up his football as he tilted his head and looked at me, then slowly walked around the corner of his garage and went in the back door of his house.

        Now as for me, there was never a wrong time, nor a missed opportunity to “savor a cold one” due to the fact that in our large household, pop was a seldom-relished luxury, so I said, “Yeah! A pop would be great!”, as I stood upright and walked towards the green-painted screen door of their sun-porch.

        Martino stood up and un-hooked the screen door and welcomed me inside. He introduced himself, and placing a hand between my shoulder blades, walked me through a side door which led into their garage. He told me to wait right there while he went to get me a pop, and soon came down the cement stairs from their kitchen door with a cold RC Cola in his hand for me.

        As I greedily began chugging and slurping that bottle of pop like a man emerging from a desert, Martino asked me if I’d ever seen a “big one”.

        “A big what?” I asked innocently, still gulping and savoring that bottle of RC.

        Martino then unzipped his jeans and flopped his cock out into his hand, saying, “A big dick”, as he began to rub and stroke it, almost proudly, eyeing me with a sickening sneer.

        I didn’t know what to say as I stood there in crippling paralysis. On the one hand, he had been nice to me and given me a pop, and on the other hand, I didn’t know what I should do next. Add to this, the fact that the only escape was behind him through the sun-porch door, and I was  trapped like a dinosaur in the LaBrea Tar Pits.

        Martino kept fondling and stroking himself as he placed his ham-hock right hand on my shoulder and pulled me closer. “You wanna touch it?”, he asked. “I’ll give ya some money.”

        “Really?” I asked, wondering how much money I might get and how much candy I could buy.

        “Yeah, sure!”, Martino replied. “Go ahead, just touch it, I ain’t gonna hurt cha.”

        I was trembling now, and as tears started welling in my eyes, Martino softly cooed, “Hey, it’s okay. There’s nothing wrong. All you gotta do is grab it and pull on it,” as he took my hand and placed it on his fat, veiny penis.

        “Here,” he encouraged, and he delved into his pocket to pull out a handful of money. “It’s all for you if you do what I tell’s ya.”

        Not wanting to get hurt, and not wanting to lose that wad of money, I pulled and stroked Martino’s “thing” like an “epileptic spazz”, tears running down my cheeks and spattering on the dry concrete garage floor.

        Martino was moaning and arching his back, eyes closed as I jerked and pulled and stroked him, until to my shock, bewilderment and electrifying horror, his wiener spit white foam all over the floor. He gasped and went kind of limp, and I leapt back a few feet, letting go of his flagging member.

        My knees were shaking so bad, it was almost as if I had been submerged in a frozen lake, and I looked up at him wondering what might happen next.

        But he just stood upright, tucked his member back into his pants, and said, “Whew! You did good kid!” and handed me the wad of money as he walked me back through the sun-porch door into the sunlight of that hideous spring day.

        Even though the sun was beaming, I felt extremely cold as I ran towards home. I dove into our bedroom and buried my face in my pillow and cried, but not before I put that money inside my pillowcase.

        About a week later, I took it all and went and bought my mom a hand-carved statue of a cockatoo bird as a Mother’s day gift. She was absolutely thrilled with her present, and I guess maybe that may have helped me get over the guilt and shame of what had happened. Seeing my mom smiling was always worth whatever it took.

Or was it?

(Chapter 18)

        I remember in those years as I was taking on more responsibilities, my mother sending me to grandma’s house to help her with chores and errands sometimes. I looked forward to those visits with grandma. She would have me walk her dogs, run to the Walgreen pharmacy to pick up her prescriptions, get groceries from the neighborhood store, and burn trash in her burn barrel, (what is it with kids and fires?).

        On those Saturday mornings when mom would send me on these “missions of mercy”, I would quickly wolf down a bowl of corn flakes, and fly out the door like “wing-footed Mercury”, anxious to get to grandma’s and do manly chores.

        Actually, truth be told, one of the best things about these excursions was the treats grandma would prepare as “payment” for my work. Oh, man, could granny bake! The closer I got to her house, the more I would begin to salivate like a Pavlovian pup, imagining what sweet, culinary concoctions gram’ might be preparing before my arrival.

        One of my favorites was her “world-renowned Johnny-cake”, huge baking pans of sweet cornbread. As I would turn the corner on her street, you could smell the sweet aroma of the Johnny-cake wafting on the warm spring breeze, and like some entranced cartoon character, the wisps of that scent would seemingly pick me up by my nostrils, and I would float through the air, inexorably drawn to the source of that mesmerizing enchantment.

        When I would walk in her door, she would be just taking the Johnny-cake out the oven, piping hot, and she’d smile and say, “Now, Jimmy, you sit right down and I’ll fix you some before you start the chores.”

        Well, you never had to twist my arm over such an invitation, so I’d whisk into a kitchen chair and dreamily watch her every move, as she would cut a “man-sized” slab of that cake, slather it with a glacier of sweet, creamy butter, and the “piece de resistance”, drown it in a deluge of clear, delicious Karo corn-syrup.

        I felt like a king when grandma would dote on me like that. And what kid wouldn’t? Miss you, gram’.

(Chapter 19)

        Because I was becoming increasingly my mother’s “go-to kid” when it came to helping out, there was a day when, once again, because it was payday, dad didn’t come home from work, but chose instead to stop off for some “camaraderie and suds” at “Gino’s Tavern”, so my mom asked me to go tell dad to come home. Maybe she figured that if one of his kids came looking for him in the bar, it would shame him into skulking out and head for home.

        When I walked into Gino’s, the transition from bright summer sunshine into the dark environs of this adult bastion of revelry, it took a moment for my eyes to adjust, but I could hear my dad’s raucous laughter and booming baritone voice coming from somewhere near the back of the tavern.

        Like a homing pigeon, I zeroed in on the general direction of his voice, and as I wended my way around people milling about, drinking, I finally saw my dad near the billiard table, surrounded by his cronies, all laughing and swilling beer.

        When I walked up to him, I timidly tugged on the side of his pants and said, “Hey, dad? Mom wants you to come home.”

        My dad stopped telling his bawdy story, and looked down through bleary eyes to notice me tugging on him. He swayed a bit as he focused on me, took one step back for balance, and roared, “Hey! It’s my kid, Jimmy! What the hell you doin’ here?”

        When I repeated mom’s request for him to come home, he cleared his throar apologetically and said, “Ah-ghah, yah, you’re right son. We should be goin’ soon. Lemme finish this round and we’ll get the hell outta here, huh? But hey! You wanna pop before we go?”

        “Sure!” I beamed. So dad bellowed across the bar to the bartender, “Hey! Gino! Bring my kid an Orange Crush will ya? And set ‘em up for everyone, ‘ay?”

        When people heard my dad was buying a round, there was a loud and grateful roar of approval throughout the bar, and it seemed the level of bacchanalian enjoyment shifted into a higher gear as drinks were delivered into hands eager to get a freebie from my pop.

        More people gathered around my dad as they continued to party, and he picked me up and sat me on a tall barstool, introducing me with a drunken roar, “Hey! This my kid, Jimmy! Say hi to my son huh?”

        Dad’s entourage filed up and shook my hand, smiling and slurring as they began to introduce themselves, and several of them hollered back at the barman and told him to “set the kid up with another pop on me, ‘ay, Gino?”

        I felt like the son of a king or something. Everyone paying rapt attention to me, and buying me drinks, or slapping me on the back with a smile as they complimented my dad. “’Ay, Moose! He’s the spittin’ image o’you! What a good-lookin’ kid!”

        My head was spinning in this environment of unbridled conviviality, and as I watched my dad, his smile never faded, and he seemed to be having the time of his life. To my mind, this was the place for a real man to be. This was where my father let his hair down and came to life, a life I had not seen in him when at home. Yes, the bar, the tavern. This was “every-man’s land.”

        I don’t recall how long we stayed there with dad, but it was surely dark when we hopped in the car and headed for home, and when we got there, mom was fuming. She curtly snapped at me and said, “Dammit Jimmy! I asked you to go bring your dad home, but you stayed and had fun with him instead, didn’t you? You get to bed right now!”

        As I hung my head and shuffled to the boy’s bedroom, mom and dad began to have a heated argument over his drunkenness and his paycheck, and I realized I had failed in my task for mom. I was quite full of mixed emotions. On the one hand, I hurt my mom and felt bad for not living up to what she had wanted of me, but on the other hand, I was still giddy inside at all the attention and fun I’d had at the bar with my dad.

        That memory of the tavern was to begin a whirlwind that became my life in the future…

       

(Chapter 20)

        As I entered the 6^th grade at “Priest Elementary”, beginning our final year in grade school, the administration began to hold dances, nudging us into a more mature phase of our lives, preparing us to enter “junior high” and the more adult arena of social interaction.

        Now, I had always loved music and dancing, groomed through years of learning to dance by my mom, who used to crank up the old 45’s she had, and “jitter-bug” or “twist” with me in our living room, when I was just a “li’l shaver”. So I eagerly looked forward to going to my first dance and possibly impress the girls in my class with my “Fred Astaire” sophistication, and skills as a suave, graceful man who “had moves”, as it were.

        I excitedly bathed that evening, and donned my finest apparel, a pair of mauve-and-gray plaid, double-knit bell bottom trousers, with a hot-pink, nylon button-up shirt, open at the top 2 buttons to reveal my bare chest and the silver, Avon “arrow-head” pendant I wore around my neck, signifying my “chic manliness” to the ladies.

        As I combed back my hair and admired myself in the bathroom mirror, I also splashed on some of my dad’s “Brut” aftershave. “Oh, those poor girls,” I thought to myself. “They don’t stand a chance against my arsenal of romance.”

        With the eagerness of a yearling buck in his first season of “the rut”, I strutted off to the school, taking care not to scuff my black, “stack-heeled” slip-on shoes, which made me stand at least 2 inches taller than my diminutive frame actually was. (I needed every weapon I had to wow the women).

        When I walked into the school gymnasium amidst the strains of “Crimson and Clover” by Tommy James & The Shondells, and the likes of “One”, by Three Dog Night, I was mesmerized. Our gym had metamorphosized from the “sweat-lodge of calisthenic hell” into a “grand ballroom”. There were crepe paper streamers draped around the walls, and colored lights seemed to shine from every corner of the room. Along the walls were the school’s dung-brown metal folding-chairs for the kids to sit, leaving the whole middle of the gymnasium floor open for us to “cut a rug”.

        As I surveyed the room like a gunfighter walking into a strange saloon, I began to feel the old familiar cold sweat begin to trickle down the center of my spine again, because it seemed every eye in the gym had turned to investigate the newcomer who had just walked in.

        Feeling as if I stood out like “a turd in a punchbowl”, I sheepishly looked down at my feet and shuffled my way across the empty vastness of that open gym floor, desperately trying to find a place alone to sit, preferably behind a coat rack or something, anywhere in which I wouldn’t be seared by the hot and haughty gazes of my “betters”.

        It seemed like an eternity, as song after song was played on the phonograph, piped through the school’s P.A. system, and yet no one was getting out on the dance floor to “shake a leg”. The boys either were sitting with their best friends, laughing and pointing at certain girls, or they were standing in a corner, simply playing “grab-ass”, as our Phys-Ed instructor would call it. The girls, in the meantime, were sitting all the way across the room from the boys, giggling behind their dainty hands, or possibly primping and preening, braiding each other’s hair and re-tying someone’s bow at the back of her “gown”.

        Maybe it had only seemed an interminable time because of my sweaty nervousness, but eventually several girls made their way bravely out onto the dance floor and began to sway and move to the music. After a few songs had played, and more girls courageously started dancing, they would walk up to some boy on whom they may have had a secret crush, and pull him out onto the dance floor.

        The place actually started coming to life by then, and I began eyeing the ladies, trying to discern which of them might want to dance with me, or at least wouldn’t scream or laugh hysterically at my advances, shaming me into a molten puddle of sweat in front of the whole 6^th grade class.

        Screwing up my courage, I laid my eyes upon Tanya Gwinn, a tall, flaxen-haired goddess whom I thought was one of the prettiest girls in our class. She had a dazzling smile, and her laughter sounded to me like the song of a bird. I was still sweating like a pig, as I made my way across the gym floor, flitting and dodging around dancing couples, all the while keeping my eye on Tanya, hoping she wouldn’t notice me, and bolt from the room like a spooked deer from a hunter.

        When I reached where she stood, I sheepishly wrung my hands, looking down at the floor, and clearing my throat, squeaked, “Ungh-HMMM. Uh, Tanya? Would you dance with me?” All the while, I was never even able to look up at her, for fear she would recognize me for who I was, and either slap me, or simply sniff at me with disdain and “brush me off”.

        But she said, “Okay!”, and grabbed my hand, leading me onto the floor in a swish of taffeta, and that old familiar aroma of “Cover-Girl” make-up.

        I can’t remember whether it was our dance moves, or the disorienting light-headedness I was feeling, but it seemed the whole room was spinning and swaying, like the keel of a storm-tossed ship on rough seas, as I jerked and gyrated on that dance floor like some epileptic having a seizure, but it didn’t matter at the moment. A GIRL was actually dancing! With ME!

        I don’t recall much more about that night, except that I managed to dance a couple more times with several different girls, before I floated home on a cloud of boyish glee. No, I was no longer a boy, this was MAN-ish glee. I had breached the realm of manhood. I had danced with “a woman’, and survived.

(Chapter 21)

        That final year as a “grade-schooler” was pretty tough on me, both in the area of romantic and physical heartaches. The night of that first dance, and my subsequent amorous attraction toward Tanya Gwinn, prompted me to try winning her affections. And how better for a boy, I’m sorry, growing MAN, to do that, than to summon my singing and songwriting talents, as learned from the likes of Elvis Presley and Dean Martin, who crooned to all those buxom and jiggly women in their movies, always winning their hearts with their smooth, dulcet warblings?

        Thus, with all the skill and emotion of a medieval troubadour, I sequestered myself in my bedroom, and penned a love-song for Tanya. Admittedly, I plagiarized the melody from “Oh Suzanna”, but the lyrical content was purely from the depths of an 11-year old’s unsullied heart.

        I wrote, and revised that song over the period of a whole weekend, with care and joyful relish, anxiously excited to slip the handwritten prose into Tanya’s desk the following Monday, and thereby melt her heart.

        When Monday arrived, I made my way hurriedly to school, and slipping furtively into our class, deposited my song in Tanya’s desk, then innocently and nonchalantly went about my schoolwork. As my imagination played out scenarios of Tanya and I frolicking on some tropical beach, or walking hand-in-hand through the surf as a golden-orange sun set in the west, I was jolted from my reveries by the tittering giggles of some of the girls, and the raucous guffaws of the boys in class, as they had all gathered near Tanya’s desk and were perusing my song with much scorn and ridicule.

        My face felt on fire in shame and embarrassment as I slunk lower at my desk, wanting desperately to be able to climb inside that cold metal “coffin” and hide under my papers and textbooks, and escape the derisive tortures of my classmates mockeries.

        As I stared straight ahead at the “broccoli-green” chalkboard in front of the classroom, I felt two hands grip my shoulders, and a hot scirocco of breath at the nape of my neck. It was the whispered voice of “Saul Lundqvist”, star forward on the 6^th grade basketball team, breathing in vehement undertones a warning towards me.

        “You’re a dead man Ezra,” Saul vowed, as he squeezed my shoulders. “We’re gonna kick your ass after school!” And having given this oath, he stood from his crouched position, his hands squeezing, and pressing me deeper into the seat of my chair, then he walked back again to re-read my melodic sonnet and guffaw once more.

        The school day stretched out like the last hours of a man headed to the “gas chamber”, desperately hoping for that phone call from the governor announcing a “stay of execution”, but no phone call was forthcoming, as certain doom at the hand of “the Jocks” lay ahead when that school bell tolled its 3 p.m. “death knell”.

        Being the “Foghorn Leghorn” of fear and cowardice I was, I exited the classroom in a tornado of swirling papers, moving so fast, my shadow was left standing at the classroom door. I “took a left-turn at Albuquerque” as “Bugs Bunny” would say, and shot down the long hallway, heading for the south doors of the school, flinging them open as I frantically raced toward the safety of home.

        I felt like “Quasimodo”  or “Frankenstein’s monster”, as the student “villagers” pursued me with their pitchforks and torches of “pre-pubescent” jealousy and rage. As I sped toward home, I was followed in hot pursuit by Saul Lundqvist, “Cliff Spayne” and “Cleve Santorini”, all noted jocks and heroes of our class.

        With each fleet-footed stride, they gained on me, closing the lead, and then with the reality of fate dawning in my brain, I surrendered to the inevitable, much like a cornered coon or wild boar, and I turned to face my antagonists, fists balled up, ready to at least get in a few “licks” before I was pummeled into oblivion.

        Unfortunately, the jocks’ headlong rush of momentum was such that I didn’t even get to swing a punch, as the three of them launched upon me like linebackers, crashing me into the ground as they proceeded to yell and throw blows at my face and stomach, or anywhere else their flailing fists would land.

        I tried to protect myself by drawing my knees into my torso and covering my face with elbows and hands, but Cleve grabbed my wrists and splayed me out, sort of like an old west cowpoke staked out over an anthill by savage Indian renegades.

        I writhed and screamed as Cleve sat astraddle my chest, his knees pinning my arms, while the three of them threw punches and open-handed slaps at my ribs and face, all the while laughing sadistically and hurling epithets and insults at me.

        “Ya think you’re hot stuff Ezra? Ya think you can steal one of OUR girls? Your family’s a buncha garbage! You guys ain’t worth shit!”

        As they spit these venomous words, Cliff began throwing heavy clods of dark, damp dirt at my face, and Cleve smeared it in, mashing the loamy earth and twigs and leaf debris into my mouth and teeth, mixing it with the blood trickling from my nose, and the tears streaming from my eyes.

        “Yeah!”, bellowed Saul. “That’s what Sabbo’s eat for dinner! Dirt and grubworms!”

        I was spent by now from the beating and subjugation of my spirit, and I stopped writhing and resisting, and I think because of my utter defeat and total submission, the boys also had had enough of their revenge, as they stood towering over me, hands on either hips or crossed over their chests, breathing heavily, surveying with satisfaction the carnage they had wrought upon me.

        “That’ll teach ya to think you’re better than anybody Sabbo!”, Cliff warned. “You stay the hell away from Tanya, or ANY of our chicks, ya got it?” And with those words, as I lay there dazed and weakened, they each walked up and spat “Loogies” in my mud-and-blood smeared face, adding more degradation and shame to my demolished self-esteem.

        I lay there when they left, regaining some of my strength, turning on my side to spit out mud and dirt and leaves, and I wiped the blood and saliva and earth along the length of my shirt sleeve as I staggered and stumbled toward home, a battered, bruised and bloodied casualty of war.

I realized an important truth that heartbreaking day. Love hurts.

(Chapter 22)

        In that same school year, I had the great joy and pride to hone my skills as a “wiz” at spelling. During class, I was undefeated time after time during spelling bees, and eventually was invited to compete with the other community schools in the area-wide spelling bee.

        I studied, and read voraciously. Cereal ingredients on the sides of boxes, scientific nomenclature for ingredients in bleach bottles, dish detergent bottles, anything I could read in preparation for the upcoming event. Maybe if people knew how intelligent I was, I might get a bit of respect and admiration.

        When the eve of the spelling bee arrived, I suffered a bit of a set-back when my mom and dad informed me they couldn’t make it to the competition because my dad had to work that night, and mom had too many younger kids to take care of at home.

        Instead, they told my brother Joe to escort me to the spelling bee, and this didn’t sit too well with him, because I think he had other plans of his own, possible to hang out with his own friends, rather than to “babysit” his “egghead” little brother.

        During our walk to the school, he kept asking me why I would want to be an “egghead”, and in the next breath, would tell me not to blow it.

        Well, I had no intention of blowing it. I was ready to dominate that spelling bee, and dominate, I did.        The whole gymnasium was packed with people sitting in the heat, as I sat on the school stage amongst all the other “spellers”, rifling off our respective words to decipher, as one by one the less “word-worthy” were eliminated.

        Then it was down to myself and one other contestant, and my heart was fluttering, my palms were moist, and my throat as dry as toast. When my foe misspelled the next word, I knew that all I had to do was spell his word correctly, and I would win. I slowly and succinctly spelled the word, letter by slow letter, and repeated the word when finished.

        When the judges announced my name as the winner of the spelling bee, I leaped from my chair, with arms above my head like a presidential nominee winning the election, smiling as big as my cheeks would allow, beaming with pride as I accepted my trophy.

        But as I looked out into the crowed to see my brother, I saw that his head was hanging down and he was shaking it back and forth, seemingly in anger, or disgust, or possibly in embarrasment.

        When I chased him down in the hall, he seemed in a hurry to either get out of the school, or to distance himself from me, as we took quick strides out of the building. When we got outside, he cussed, “You’re a real asshole, y’know that? You looked like an idiot jumping around up there like some Miss America or something!”

        I was crushed. I stopped walking, letting my prized trophy hang worthlessly at my side.

        “Why? I won, didn’t I?”

        “Yeah,” he sneered. “You won the asshole-of-the-school award. Get away from me, you’ll tarnish my reputation, “ Joe replied, as he started running away from me into the darkness.

        When I chased after him, he kept hollering for me to stay back, but as I pushed hard to catch him, he suddenly turned and gut-punched me hard, so that I dropped my trophy and lost my breath. Joe whispered in vehement tones, “Listen, you stay the hell away from me from now on at school, man, you hear me? You embarrassed the shit outta me tonight, and people are gonna look at you as some smart-ass from now on. So stay away Ezra. Just stay the fuck away.” And with that, He walked off in the night, leaving me gasping on my knees next to my great award.

        Can you spell “Cardiopulmonary devastation”?

(Chapter 23)

        By the beginning of the 1970’s, our family had reached “full-strength” with the arrival of my youngest sister, Jonelle, and since dad was the sole bread-winner, it began to dawn on me that if I wanted new “Dingo” boots, or a cool Levi’s denim jacket, or simply “spending money” to hit the “soda shop”, I was going to have to get a job of some sort.

        Now, in the extreme northern territory where we lived, winter could dump glacial amounts of snow, so shoveling walks and driveways was a pretty decent way to “earn some scratch”. Add in some lawn-mowing around the neighborhood and the raking of leaves in the fall, and a kid could do pretty well for himself.

        But my first “legitimate” job was my paper route. I hired on delivering “The Milwaukee Journal” and “Milwaukee Sentinel” in the wee hours of the morning, six days a week, to approximately 90 to 100 homes around the area. My dad was pretty proud of me as I dragged my first bundles of newspapers into the house, making ready to stuff them into my paperbag and begin delivering “the news”. He tried to show me the proper way to roll up the papers and tuck in the end, thereby making them more compact for my bag and much easier to “hurl” at the subscriber’s door.

        I got pretty proficient at it, able to trundle past someone’s door and with an underhand-backward flip of my arm, sort of like tossing a frisbee, I could splang the lower aluminum panel of someone’s storm door, making it sound like a cymbal crash and causing their dogs to bark like the house was on fire, waking my customers to digest what had transpired in the world while they had slept.

        One of my favorite places to deliver the paper was a trucking depot across the railroad tracks in an industrial zone of town. Each morning, I’d walk in through one of the open truck bay doors, and deposit both a “Sentinel” and a “Journal” paper in the men’s break-room. The guys would be sipping coffee and arguing over whether or not the “Bears” would beat the “Packers” on Sunday, and they’d welcome me to “take a load off” and have a cup o’coffee and a “long john” pastry to warm up from my arduous rounds. I felt very manly as I sat there with these rugged truckers and mechanics, being treated as an equal and a peer, a real “working stiff.”