Ferocious Centipedes
[Sketches of a Minnesota Shoeshine Boy’s life]
Written by: Dennis L. Siluk
Index of Interlinking sketches/episodes
And Poems
Index of Stories:
Note: dates are approximate
Non-fiction/ Stories 1 thru 15 were written in St. Paul, Minnesota; 16 through 23, written in Lima, Peru
Introductory Poem: Grandpa’s House
Introductory Poem: —Passing by the Cathedral
[Written 2/21/2006]
Ferocious Centipedes
[This Series written in St. Paul, Minnesota]
1—The Attic [1958: written 7/20/2005]
2—Grandpa’s Mantel Clock [1959: written 8/8/05]
3—Goldfish, Dying [1959: written 9/30/2005]
4—The Dark Bedroom [1954: written 8/3/2005]
5—Ferocious Centipedes [1953-55 [?]: written 8/17/2005]
A Poetic Story: —The Cat Poem [1959]
[Written #1065 1/6/2006]
6—The Winter School [l957: written 8/1/2005]
7—The Lunch Box [1956/In English and Spanish]
8—The Big Carrot [1959; written 9/24/2005]
9—The Corral [1952: written 8/7/2005]
10—The Pig [1957: written 8/13/2005]
11—The Porch [1960: written 11/24/2005]
12—The Wino [l958: written 8/13/05]
13—Grandpa’s Reproaching [1957: written 9/28/2005]
A Poetic Story: —The Potato Patch [1957-58]
[Written 1/31/2005]
14—The Brick [1952: written9/29/2005]
15—The Big Mouse [written: 8/7/2005]
Grandpa’s House [Series]
[This Series written in Lima, Peru]
EP= El Parquetito Café
16—Grandpas Pipe [1959: written 4/22/2006/in Peru]
17—The Wiggly Tooth [1958: written 4/17/2006]
Written at EP/Café, Lima Peru
18—Dust Under the Bed [1956: Written 5/16/06]
19—2nd-Fight [1957: Written 5/16/06]
20—A Double $500 [1962: Written 5/16/06]
21—“Woodview” [—Detention Center: 1961]
Note: Stories: “Dust Under the Bed”, “ 2nd-Fight,” and
“A Double $500 written at Angelo’s Café 5/15/2006;
Written 5/18/2006 at Angello’s Café [Lima, Peru]
22—Grandpa Was Always Old [Elegy]
Written in Peru, 5/18/2006
23—First Sight of Death [1956-57]
Written 5/19/2006 EP Café/Lima, Peru
24— “Liver or Steak?”
[Grandpa’s House/1956]
Written 6/1/2006 at the “Favorita,” café in Lima, Peru
25—Huge Horse [1960]
Written 5/19/06 El Parquetito [EP] Café, Lima, Peru
End Poems:
1—Train to Newport (1963)
[Written 2/23/2006]
2—The Missing Song
[End Poem #1331/5/1/2006]
ÿ
Grandpa
About the Houses
Advance
A note about the stories and the houses you are going to read about shortly, those involved with the stories here. There are two houses here Dennis will be writing about, and a boarding farm; the first was at 109 East Arch Street, in St. Paul, Minnesota. The City drew up plans [a design] for low income housing that involved a certain area of land, and his grandfather’s house was on the list to vacate: so his Grandpa was forced to move: as was his brother and along with my mother, we all moved, all of us who lived there with Grandpa, moved out in the summer of 1957. We moved to 186 Cayuga Street, in St. Paul, Minnesota, about two miles away from where the other house was. Prior to these two houses, between the years of 1949 and 1951 or ’52, the author and his brother and mother lived on Ingelhard Street, in an apartment, on the weekends, and during the week, lived in North St. Paul, on a Boarding Farm, until that is, when they moved in with their Grandpa.
He, Dennis was born in October of 1947, so you can look at the dates of when the stories took place as you read them. It was the Post WWII era. Then the 50s came into the scene, with Rock ‘n Roll, at the head of the switchboard. The dance called The Twist soon won the hearts of many; Elvis and Pat Boone, were replaced soon by the Beatles, and Elvis had his ‘Comeback,’ in 1968, but these stories you are about to read only touch the surface of the 60s, and for the most part, remain in the 50s; about a ten year period, a decade of sketches of a restless youth, growing.
The Author has used the name of Lee, his middle name, and Chick, a nickname his mother called him growing up, to specify him as the character in the story.
By: Rosa Peñaloza
ÿ
Passing by the Cathedral
I often passed by the St. Paul Cathedral:
Passing by in a car;
Perhaps I’ve passed it a million times,
I’ve never counted, it always swells
My heart.
I pass it so fast
(Nowadays, or so it seems)
It’s hard to make it out; but no need to,
I know it by heart…
I want to get out of the car and go up to it:
It rests on a summit (the highest point in
St. Paul, I do believe), to what,
I’m not sure,
It seldom changes its composure.
A passing glimpse is all I get—my eyes are not
As quick, or swift as they used to be—
Getting old.
When I was young: to walk in those great halls
Of hers, or under her great dome—walk
Around those monstrous pillars: often crossed
My mind—and one day I did, and I seemed
So very small, listening to my echo… return!
In autumn, its copper dome looks bluish, with
Autumn colors of: red, orange, green and blue
(Around it): most beautiful.
Leaves brushed across
It’s encircling streets and lawns, by the
Minnesota winds….
They put on brown copper to its dome, a new
Roof, they call it; about five years ago, that no one
On earth likes—heaven I doubt will even
Glance at it now.
It’s a shame, the young folks will only have
Pictures to look at how it used to be, until that is,
Until the copper molds with age again.
#1229 2/21/06
1.
The Attic Bedroom
[An Old Type Winter—1958] Short Story
Again, Lee, now eleven-years old, and Mike, his brother, two years his senior, ran through the second floor attic bedroom discovering Grandpa Anton was listening, they heard grandpa cursing and mumbling in the living room, then their mother crossed from the kitchen to the dinning room and they could hear her foot steps crossing into her bedroom opening up the upstairs attic door, usually it was left open so the heat could rise, but closed when the boys wanted the attic to be sound proof. Their mother [Elsie] like a baseball umpire calling a strike asked would say: “… what is going on up there?” It normally was a good pillow fight. They’d back off slowly standing by the cold window, their beds on each side of the window, they’d be silent for a moment—looking at each others eyes…(wanting to laugh but stone still) the chill of the wind seeping through the crevasses of the window had a bite to it—: and then they’d start laughing when the coast was clear, when they’d hear her go walking away, but she’d leave the door open for assurances it would remain quiet
Lee and Mike, and their mother lived with Grandpa Anton, and they all knew who owned the house, Grandpa…and quiet was a virtue on his list; as a result, Lee and Mike would run down the stairs to put their coats and hats on, to venture out into the arctic type Minnesota winter: through the kitchen to the pantry entrance where the backdoor was—: grandpa would be pacing the living room floor, pipe in his mouth looking at his watch–-glancing at the black mantel clock in the dinning room against the wall, a mirror overhead, as if he was going someplace… waiting for the Sunday’s roast to be done…he’d follow the boys with his eyes looking above his pipe and knuckles as he placed his tobacco…testing to see if it was lit far enough down the hole of the pipe.
There was no dog to kick, so Grandpa Anton would kick the rug, as if there was not enough noise to distract him, but grandpa Anton was not one of those—widowers, who for thirty-years who liked sitting around too long; so, over and over and over he’d walk his path from the front door that lead out to the porch, from the living room where the T.V. sat, to the entrance of the dinning room which was partitioned off only by a huge archway, as if there was a no-go zone. If Hop Alone Cassidy was on television, he’d sit in his sofa chair in front of the it (hoping I’m sure) the roast would not demand his assistance for a small piece of his time; yet—unrepentantly …the phone would ring, and on the other end would be an Uncle or Aunt of the boys, they all came over for Sunday dinner, all fifteen of them—it would be sacrilegious if they protested (and didn’t), and so they’d come, no matter how much snow, rain or sleet was forecasted for the day, —other than a tornado, they’d come. It was best also, that they call, for the phone had a forty-call limit on it, and a party line to boot: that at times had double conversations [parties] going on, as you’d try to carry a dialogue with your caller…it could be hectic.
Lee and Mike would be putting on their boots to tread through the heaps of snow the winter wonderland left the night before, for it was never graceful in allowing man or beast a pathway in that area of the country.
(Leaping backwards just a bit here.)
Grandpa now, who had been listening to the boys upstairs—also to the racket in the pantry, he waited patiently for the door to slam standing by the phone, hoping they’d stay outdoors for the day, the whole day…god forbid they come back before Hippie… was over… but now back to the phone; …the boys could see Grandpa talking through the three windows (along side the house) as they walked by the dinning room, as he stood on the boarder of the living room and dinning room…the-no go zone: the boys tightening their scarf’s around their faces as the below zero winds and snow slapped raw frosted ice at their cheeks and foreheads, eyes, freezing every exposed piece of flesh, even their hair, creating white frozen beards, numbing the rest of their exposed skin, while trying to creep around the edges of their hats up their pants legs, to chill whatever was left, and onto their earlobes, and into their ears, Old Man Winter, hoping to frost-bite the living…daylights out of them.
2.
Grandpa's Mantel Clock [1959]
The main dresser or cabinet, better described—for it was in the dinning room of the house on Cayuga Street where our family had moved to in 1958—the main dresser held the black Mantel Clock of my grandfather’s; as would be described: a long and dark wooden clock, turn of the century type, as I recall, with two cabinets below it which kept the doilies, linens and other such things in place, for the dinning table. On top of the long stretched out dresser (piece of furniture) a section was for my mother’s things or at least that is where her keys and such items would end up each day after work, so she could grab them quickly in the morning as she dashed off to the stockyards in South Saint Paul, Minnesota, about thirteen miles away; and then, there—right in the middle onto of the cabinet [cupboard] was the old turn of the century wooden clock, black with pillars on it. Black as black can be: shinny black. It looked like it had a porcelain face, and it might have said ‘Made by Seth Thomas,’ in it (as I recall)—on the face of the clock. As one walked through the kitchen, to get to the living room crossing over through the dinning room, it was to the left (by grandpa’s no-go zone), with a mirror adjusted on the wall right over the clock, you could see the dinning room table if you stood right in front of it, and its six wooden chairs.
It was an eight-day clock; it rang on the half-hour, and hour. Grandpa would wind it up every so often, no one else dared to touch it. The Old Russia Bear, had it there ever since I can remember; my grandmother, whom had never seen us boys, my brother and I, died in 1933, died at the age of 33, died of double-pneumonia, her picture was next to the clock, on the right-hand side of it, to the south.
Also there was a cigar box full of coins nearby the clock, mostly pennies, but other coins as well; —and I liked to check them out for the dates, I saved pennies, old pennies back then. I always wished I could find the 1909 S VDB penny, boy what a prize it would had been, but I would have to wait 45-years, and then buy one for $800-dollars. One time I got a 1914 penny, and someone said the ‘D’ had been cut off it, so it was not worth even a penny; my luck. I never had much luck to speak of; only a lot of good breaks in life, so I didn’t count on luck for much, if anything. But my grandfather would allow me to check the pennies out, off and on during my formative years, and when I got older too, I’d end up buying a black mantel clock (like that penny), and I would eventually send my son a black mantel clock who lived several states from me (Cody, in Columbus, Ohio). It is funny how we absorb life’s little idiosyncrasies; more often than not we pick up and live our childhood perhaps sideways—after our childhood is long gone that is; what we couldn’t do then, we fix it up now (not a bad thing, or good thing, just something we do). But it was nice he thought of me; all because of a clock and a box of pennies, we both found something to talk about, and he didn’t talk much.
3.
Goldfish, Dying! [1958]
It is forenoon, the summer of the year 1958. My mother just went down stairs, she says, “I won’t be long, I got to wash a few cloths.”
I’m at the sink, cleaning out my fishbowl. Grandpa is outside, trimming the lilac bushes; my brother is someplace with his new go-cart. As I was about to say, I’m cleaning the glass of the fish bowel in the kitchen, that is; taking the rocks out: replacing the water, cleaning the rocks, and I look at my goldfish (I’m eleven years old); I remain standing at the sink in the kitchen.
Now I got everything ready: the new water, and the rocks are back into the bowel, and I’m—I’m about to put my goldfish back into the bowl: slowly I pick it up, pickup my glass with the fish in it, my intentions are to drop the fish in the rounded top (the hole) of the bowel (and I know I got to be quick)) and coordinated)); I will have once chance, but I’m ready; I’m already to pour the fish back into its home: yes I say again to myself: I got to do it hurriedly, but the fish is feisty very lively today (perhaps overfed them yesterday)) there are two of them)); two quick witted fish, I think they are—quicker than me anyhow, and I get the notion they do not like the environment right now in that glass, so I raise the glass up and as I start to pour the water in the glass, with the fish in it, into the glass bowel, with the fish, the hole of the bowel looking at me, the glass hits the rim, the rim of the glass bowel and the fish falls head first (both) into he sink, and I panic, and I panic, and I rush, rush, rush to save my goldfish: I’m in a terror, fright, alarm…god, what can I do…?
do…
[?] I scream: “Mom…mom…my fi…as...fa…s…help!!”
My mother runs up the stairs. Her face is not calm, and sullen, her eyes brooding and alert— (here adrenaline has kicked in to high gear) within them I can see trouble for me: her expression is sudden, intent and concerned. My eyes are like marbles, the fish is in the sink wiggling all about, it might go down into the drain (I tell myself): I trip over your tongue, my words stutter out slowly: everything is upside down in my head, words coming out right—I look at her and the fish: her and the fish: her and the fish.
My mother says: “Fish…what fish…? are you talking about…!~? What’s the matter, are you hurt?”
She looks in the sink, at me, at the fish in the sink, at me, grabs the fish, puts it into the fish bowel, so easy, too easy (I’m thinking, why I couldn’t do that).
“Explain to me what is the emergency for you to be screaming so loud? (Hesitates) —The fish?” she asks staring into my marble eyes, with her sudden, intent and lack of concerned eyes now (knowing there is really no emergency). I think she knows it’s the fish, and I overreacted (woops).
“I couldn’t get the fish…it was, was, was...go,gooo…ing to go down the drain, I thought I was ga-going to kill it, I mean, it was going to die in the drain…I got…I couldn’t get it, it, it…though it would stop breathing...!”
“Do you want me to have a heart attack?” she says now, with a civil voice: no more concern, no more anger, just a sigh of relief, and a time for explaining.
“Not again, do not call me up these stairs to save another fish again, next time…just make sure there is no next time, ok? Pick it up and put it in the bowl!!”
“Yes,” I said, and then was tongued tied, as I looked at my fish swimming around safely in my fish bowel, and my mother walking down the steps. Was it worth it—Yes, I think so—but I’m sorry I caused her to think the worse had happened to me: but what are mothers for? Did I ever do it again—never!
4.
The Dark Bedroom [1953-54?]
[St. Paul, Minnesota] It’s hard to forget ones old home, or house, it was at 109 East Arch Street in St. Paul, Minnesota, it was: grandpa’s house, mom and my brother Mike (my older brother by two-years: I was six then, perhaps six and a half years old), along with two aunts all lived there in the early 50s; an extended family type situation you could say. Anyhow, he, my brother was snoring away—(Mike) you could see into the living room through the open space of the door (I opened it a bit), the space heater was flickering with light—(fire) I could see it, hear it; it was where everyone was—everyone besides me and my brother—that is, everyone else in the household were in the living room.
“Hush in there,” Mother said, “…you boys go-on back to sleep now.”
The black mantel clock was ticking, the door shut again, and the room went dark then Mike said, beside me:
“Go to sleep—will you!” pulling the covers over his head; therefore, I remained quiet; that is, quiet and restless, but by being quiet I could hear the voices in the living room, that is what I wanted in the first place, I just wanted company, but so be it if I couldn’t have it; it was as if I could hear the dark, it stopped, and mother looked at me peeking through the opening of the door again—Grandpa was smoking his pipe as usual, sitting by the fire, socks on, the big black and white T.V. on; mother just bought it at the Emporium I think, or perhaps the Golden Rule, both big department stores; she bought them a few months preceding this evening.
The dark went away, and mother looked at me again; Betty and Rose were watching the T.V., her sisters. Mom walked by my door again, smiled, walking to the kitchen, couldn’t tell if the smile was for me—the smile—or something someone said in the living room; she had a lit cigarette, a chain smoker (she would smoke for forty-years then see me quite smoking, and she’d get on her hands and knees and ask the Lord to help her, and that would be that, no more smoking).
“No.” Grandpa said, mother had asked a question.
“Yes,” Betty said.
As mother walked by with two glasses of water, cigarette in her mouth she looked at me again. Then the dark came back, she had shut the door, kicked it I think. I could sense her presence standing and waiting outside the door; she was still outside I think, waiting for me to open it, I’m sure of it. I could hear her breathing, I think. Then I woke up, it was morning.
5.
Ferocious Centipedes
[1953-55?]
As a child I lived for a long period of time in an extended family environment, my grandfather, Anton was the head of the house, and it was my brother and I, my mother, and two of her sisters living in a small three bedroom house. The house was heated by a space heater in the living room. The iceman had to bring dried ice to keep our icebox cold; we had a well along side of the house for water, and there were old barns next door on each side of our house, being converted into garages. The city of St. Paul was quite conservative back then [in Minnesota]. And many families lived like us—together in an extended family environment; those setups seem to be coming back some nowadays, with the shortage of houses in Minnesota, and high rents. They were hard-working folks, my family: uncles, aunts, grandfather, and my mother; my mother worked for Swifts, at the stockyards, and my grandfather a painter, worked for a few outfits, and eventually, acquired a restaurant, along with his day job as a painter and had someone work it when he couldn’t.
My brother Mike—two years older than I—and I slept in the bedroom next to the dinning room; my mother in the bedroom across from the living room; and my grandfather in the bedroom across from the bathroom. The two sisters slept on the couch and a rollaway bed, in the living room, and sometimes with my mother. This was during the early fifties [1951-57]. We did have plenty to eat on the table back then, just not much money to do anything else. It was in 1956 when we got our large black and white television, and what a crown of glory it was for the house.
Of all those days, there are a few select that will never slip my memory. My mother, poor woman, she’d be walking in the dinning room setting up lunch, or wiping down the curtains, and a centipede would appear; you know, those little creatures, wormlike animals with a hundred legs, one for each section of its body, slim body, and little antennas (modified legs, that can be poison fangs) you can’t really see those legs, unless you are on top of them. Little beady eyes and yellowish in color (they came in all sizes: large, medium and small back then), some a bit more tan. They could run when cornered I’ll tell you that, perhaps faster than the Roadrunner (that cartoon Roadrunner on TV I used to so much of), and I suppose that is what made them more creeper than a mouse, for my mother was not afraid of mice.
But let me get to the point here. She’d jump and scream when she saw a centipede; indeed she would—, scream until her lungs almost collapsed. She definitely looked as though she needed calm down pills. Arrayed in a morbid, pale face, grandpa would come running from wherever he was: basement, kitchen, cellar (feeding his pigeons), thinking the roof fell in, fell on top of her—only to find out he had to undertake the killing of a ferocious centipede, thus, he would take his bare-foot, smash it, and walked away saying,
“I can’t believe this, it…it…by god-what is the matter with that woman!” and then came an entourage of four lettered words.
Next, she’d quickly put on her slippers if she didn’t have them on already: white-moccasins, with beady-laced trim around, and in the center of the leathered moccasins; she was partial fond of that kind of footwear.
To be quite frank, I never saw a more frightened person over a centipede in my entire life—then, and up to now, more than my mother. During these outbursts, she seemed to suck up all the oxygen in the room she was in; yes, without a doubt, I’d seem to get exhausted just watching it, watching these trials of fright; during those years we lived at 109 East Arch Street. I really felt for her, I mean, I felt helpless wanting to help her, and perplexed at the same time, because I couldn’t; trying to figure out what was so scary about a bug, other than it was creepy looking.
Then there was the spiders who loved to entertain my mother, and they seemed to paralyze her like the centipedes, to the point there was no escape from them, but to scream; and scream she did; again I say, old grandpa would look at her when she’d go into those ferocious spells, and just utter, “Yeah, yeah (and the four letter words)…” and shake his head as if it was loose at its core. But I kind of miss those days. Well, kind of, she’s been gone now for a few years, and just before she passed on, I brought back a large dead tarantula, from South America, and told her if she could hold the dead creature, I’d give her a little pot of bullion, and she held it, but only for a five seconds, and she got her pot.
A Poetic Story—The Cat Poem [1959]
[Written #1065 1/6/2006]
Note by the author: I am not sure what got into me about wanting to write a cat poem (as you can see I selected a great name for the poem); I just did it, out of the blue. I must have been triggered somehow because I do not care for cats. To be honest, if God gave me a choice between cats and cockroaches, I’d take the latter: and I’m sure I might have been a happier person. I do think cats are good for something, not sure what, perhaps for rats. It all stems back to when I was a boy scout, or at least that is what a psychologist would say: flashbacks, the white rabbit syndrome. When I was out camping at St. Croix campgrounds (Minnesota), back when I was thirteen, or so, I was in a big tent with kids, and guess who wakes me up? Yes, a cat purring down my mouth paws on my throat, and it scares the crap out of me when I opened my eyes and saw those marble eyes staring into mine. Now that I think of it, perhaps this poem is long overdue. In any case, I dedicate it to all the cat lovers out there, to include my wife:
The Cat Poem
Cats, I never did care for them
My wife had—before we wed—
Fifteen of them—.
They’re too lordly in the household
For me—:
Too aristocrat-able to please;
They are everything but what they
Seem, and
They seem surreal; and endlessly
Dreaming—or perhaps it’s scheming
(I can’t tell the difference)—but,
One thing I do know: they have mystic
Marble-eyeballs—: gives me the chill.
6.
The Winter School
[Ecole St. Louis/in St. Paul, MN; 1957]
“We…!” [We being: my brother and I] were a team, that is, we were quite the team growing up in the inner city of St Paul, Minnesota, during the l950s; we wrestled with the long drawn out winters of the late fifties on our way to school, Ecole St. Louis.
My mother, a meatpacker, who worked at the ‘Swift & Co.,’ in South St. Paul, across the Mississippi River—the stockyards, that is, was the biggest in the USA, next to Chicago’s I heard. And the few times I got to go out there with my mother’s boyfriend, Ernie, to pick her up—she had to work a different shift often—I got to witness it’s hugeness, and it was like a little city unto itself.
As I look back now, it seems I was just enduring those winters, one after the other—the winters nowadays are nothing compared to them it seems. Yes, I remember trying to rush to grow up and get out of this winter wonderland of Minnesota also. But my brother Mike and I in spite of this, had to wait, and so as the winters came and left, we would hike through the snow, across the Mont-airy Park (where we once lived on Arch Street, until they converted it to low cost housing), down the hill, across the road, and into the downtown area of the city, to 10th near Cedar Street, where Ecole St. Louis, our French, Christian school was. It was a three-mile hike, and by the time I got to the school, my legs were sore from lifting them up to take the next step forward, especially if the snow was hard, and you could not push your legs forward, rather, you had to lift them, and set them back down to the next step. This went on until you got to the sidewalk, which was down the hill, from the park I just mentioned. No public busing then.
The school was right across the street from the Police and Fire Station. I loved this little French school, I wasn’t French though, not by a long shot, not sure why it was referred as that, other than the parish was supposed to be French, and I always assumed the church belong with the school—; matter of fact, there were more Irish, and Polish kids there than French. And none of the nun’s was French, or looked or spoke French, to my attention to detail. The only thing French about it was its name I think, other than, possibly its structure—and again I say, adjacent to the school was the French church, or parish I just spoke of, there you may have found your French people.
The school was erected to house classrooms, and we had some one hundred and thirty children at the school. We had big classrooms, and sometimes had two grades per classroom. And my guess would be there must had been thirty plus students to a room at times, if not forty.
The school consisted of two stories on a high basement of native limestone; Minnesota is good for limestone. The top story was a slate mansard roof broken by circular windows with fleur-de-lis ornament. I think a French-type dome, narrow façade composed of a forward block or pavilion. The back and sides of the building were of a much plainer design. Actually there was a third floor, but it wasn’t used, I had snuck up to it a few times. An attic I’d had called it back then. But prior to my attending the school which was constructed and opened in 1886—the church preceding it by thirteen-years—was used for a theater of sorts. When I snuck up into it, one could put his foot into holes in the floor-boards, created and broken by time’s neglect; and other rats like me sneaking up for a glimpse I suppose, didn’t help it. If you didn’t watch your step, I do believe one might have even ended up on top of a teacher’s desk below. Some of the boards even looked as if they were rotting in places, possibly a few holes in the roof causing dampness—into our youthful little bones below; and then weakness to some beams. They can swell you know, and then be reduced in strength. And so carefully I explored the forbidden.
The school was not free to attend, and at times it did become costly for my mother (a single parent); I especially got the feeling of its high cost, when my mother’s workplace ‘Swift’s and Co.,’ went on strike. During those days, my mother would instruct us boys, for it was just my brother and I, instruct us to tell the Mother Nun-Superior [or principle], they’d have to wait to get the next payment [tuition], they always frowned on those provocative requests, and I was the giver of bad news often, too often to their liking: not building up much of a rapport with the chain of command. I told myself a number of times I’d not cry if the school closed down, or if my mother could not afford to pay, going to a public school was fine with me, a little scary, but fine. I doubt they would cut your hair there with a grass cutter, or make you write your name fifty-times on the blackboard for leading a gang in the back of the school to fight another class. Hick I thought, I had leadership skills (and in future time, became a Staff Sergeant in the US Army; and even ended up in a little war called Vietnam); is that not what they wanted. Plus, I won a knife, for not missing any school, the year before. But Mother Superior looked at me stern, when she said:
“Now you can pick any one of these five items for your reward for not missing any school…” and I looked at a holy cross, and a bible, and a picture of Jesus and Mary, and then I took the fishing knife. She gave me a sneer, and so I held onto the knife tightly (instinct), and quickly got away from her before she talked me into changing my mind, and item, I do recall her echoing:
“You sure you want the knife?” I was sure.
But for reasons unknown to me, my mother wanted my brother and me to have a Christian education. Although I can’t remember much about them talking about the bible—, but we did respect the flag, and go over the Ten Commandments. And a quick prayer in the morning never seemed to hurt, sometimes silent, in front of the beautifully painted statue of Marry, and a few words to the American Flag beside her out loud, and on with business we went. I guess today it’s against the Constitution for some odd reason. Oh well, things change.
Once we got to school, my brother went upstairs, and I down, kicking the snow off our rubbers above our shoes: that is, went over and around our shoes, unzipping them down the center, then putting them in the back closet area, where we all hung up our coats, hats, and hoped everyone remained with Christian values for the rest of the day, and didn’t take them.
Linda was favored by my nun teacher, not sure why, she was cute, I liked her, and knew where she lived, and even went over to see her once or twice, with my friend Mike Rosette, and he and I got in a fight over her (my first fight); something like that. A few of the older kids were trying to coheres me to defend my honor; as you might expect, Linda was watching, and I, I…hate to admit, I wanted to show off. And so I continued unabated and I knocked Mike on the ground—I stopped, even though the other kids told me to continue, I just, just couldn’t continue. Mike kind of whispered in a hurtful way,
“…they’re simply egging you on…to give them a show…!” he added something like: and for me not to get encouraged by it. And so I stepped back, and the older kids got mad; he was right, it was their show, and now it was over. Point well taken I thought afterwards, for Mike and I were still friends.
—I remember the tall ceiling in the rooms in the school; it had lowered light fixtures that hung overhead, giving a rustic kind of atmosphere, and it seemed to give off shadows, and blotted light. When a sunny day came in winter, a glare came through the windows. Matter-of-fact, I never liked sitting by the windows in winter, the windows were always cold, and the window sills allowed cold air to seep through, and it got against my neck, up my legs, and ankles, and broke my concentration; what little I had back then; I think I was hyperactive, but that word was not used back then, it was called, mischievous, or high energy. My energy, my blood was like a wild river running up and down my body, giving me chills sometimes. And when I left to go home after school, onto the busy city streets I’d rush to walk home before it got dark. Winter in Minnesota made the days short and nights long. And if I had a dime, I’d walk a block over to Jackson Street and wait for the bus. My brother got out an hour earlier not sure why, I guess because he was in the upper grades and it was a gift to the elder for making it through the lower grades. If you could survive through all these winters at this school, I guess you deserved a little something, my day was coming I told myself. It was just a few more winters away.
Well, things didn’t work out as I thought they would, or maybe they did, matter-of-fact, maybe they worked out for the better. In l958, my mother was out of work again, and we couldn’t pay the tuition, and the school couldn’t afford to waive it for a period of time and so I was forced to go to a public school (sometimes things work for the better). It was a bit frightful, especially that summer thinking how I was going to get to school in the winter. I had it all sorted out for the little French school. But I pushed it aside and figured things would work themselves out somehow, they always did. And they did; and I got to stand in the snow now in winter, or inside the Jewish grocery story about five blocks from my house to wait for the bus. It was too far to walk, seven miles that is; as Ecole St. Louis, was but a few. The school closed it doors in the early 60’s, it was sad to hear that: and then they tore it down to make space for another building, a more modern structure, ugly as hell. Well, that’s progress for you. But that was my last winter at the school, l957; I had been there since l954. No big thing.
7.
The Lunchbox
[1954-1957] We couldn’t always afford the hot lunches at St. Louis school [in St. Paul, Minnesota] during my elementary years [formative years], so my mother bought me a lunchbox, a Lone Ranger designed lunchbox, and I was proud to own it: yes indeed, very bigheaded about it, I suppose, if kids had heroes, and not absorptions, he was kind of my hero. And my mother would make my peanut butter sandwiches, from none other than Peter Pan Peanut Butter gars, not sure if they sell that kind anymore; then of course came Skippy Peanut butter down the lane, and a little computation [I was 9-years old then].
Then I think we went back and forth with which peanut butter was best for my lunchbox, I mean, it had to be the best for the Lone Ranger lunchbox, for I was carrying his symbol about (and I think I even had some kind of secret badge to a club of his if I recall right). And amongst those sandwiches, were a lone banana or apple, or orange, I hoped not the orange always, it was too messy, and I’d just stick a finger in it and such out all the juice, and go wash my hands. Thus, I preferred the banana.
Then my brother Mike and I would march on down to school, and when lunchtime came, I’d march on down to the basement of the 1886, schoolhouse, and eat lunch in the lunchroom. There were different times for lunch for different classes and grades, and so Mike being two grades higher than I, ate before me, and left school before me, at 2:00 PM, verses, my 4:00 PM. But I always prayed mom would forget to buy wax paper for the sandwiches, and have to give us .25-cents [or was it .15-cents?] for lunch: yes I preferred the hot lunch to the cold, although I liked bringing my Lone Ranger lunchbox.
If, in fact, anything, as I look back now, my mother (who has passed on ((July 1, 2003)), loved being a mom, I mean, she really did. I suppose the years of us boys in our teens got too her, as they do to most parents, if not all parents, but I think (as I now look back and review some old pictures), she just simply like being a mom; enjoyed it, love it. It was more than a job to her. She never had much in life, but she had that.
On Sundays, old Grandpa, Russian built, stout, would call up the family for afternoon dinner; it was always like a banquette it seemed. He was a good ole soul, just cursed with the wicked tongue a lot (as they say in Peru: he had hair on his tongue). He’d make the best Sunday dinners anyone could have imagined. And if the relatives would not come over to eat, God save their souls, he’d start to curse the Old Russian way, and it would go on eternally, or so it seemed. You’d think he was fifty feet tall, he was 4’11, yes, just under five foot, like my wife, and she thinks she’s fifty feet tall to. Anyhow they came, and what was left over: chicken or ham, we’d get in the lunches until doomsday [doomsday being, until there was no more of course]. I mean grandpa bought a 20-pound ham, two chickens, sausage, and the stove was cooking from midnight the day before until noon the following day, just before everyone sat down to eat on Sunday; sometimes his cooking pans he’d put in the oven, were so large, they barely fit.
But yes, yes undeniably, there was a problem though: when mom put the ham onto the sandwiches, and wrapped them in wax paper, by noon the following day, they’d be soggy, yes really, saggy as milk on breed, and you’d have to drag the meat off. But I never said anything, lest I end up with peanut butter five days in a row.
In the lunch room Linda MaCalley the eye catcher of the room, we had two grades in our room, and between thirty and forty students [big rooms, and lots of heads to look over, at and around], as I was about to say, Linda MaCalley, she was the prettiest one in class, and we sat together now and then, more than, than now, but it happened. I even stuck up for her once, that is, I was playing by her house one day, downtown St. Paul, after school, walked my friend Mike Reassert, his home (he and Linda lived by one another; we were all poor folks], and he said something about her and a fight started, I got the better of him, but she got to watch her hero fight for her. It didn’t lead to anything, but then the Lone Ranger’s followers couldn’t expect much, could they now? I had a reputation to uphold for him. He may have been my first hero, I’m not sure, but it is good to have good heroes to emulate. It delivers down the road of life. I don’t know much of Mr. Clayton Moore, whom was the actor in the movie [s], but I can say this, they don’t make his kind anymore. Nor would I care to have my children emulate any new actors of today, God help their souls should they. Anyhow, this is the tale, the story of my first lunchbox you could say, in those far of days of my youth.
8.
The Big Carrot [1959]
Uncle Ernest, who really was not my uncle but my mother’s boyfriend for some forty-years found out my secret when I was eleven + years old, back in the summer of ’59, in St. Paul, Minnesota. He had about a half archer of land in the city, and a big garden and he gave me a small section of it, of the garden that is, so I could grow carrots.
Well, I was grateful, and so I tried to copy him by planting my seeds in a number of rows: not too close, not too far apart, and picking out the weeds, watering it when needed, and so forth and so on; but my carrots just didn’t grow like his: but my envy grew.
Well, we lived next door to him—kind of lived next door, across from an empty lot, a big empty lot—dividing our houses: my brother Mike, my mother and my grandpa, we lived together; but it was grandpa’s house. And Earnest had two children who lived with him. And so it wasn’t a long hike to his garden: with a simple jump over the fence, which he never liked.
So it was that that every so often I’d go and check on my garden to see how my carrots were doing: and they were not doing very good, not compared to his. This one day, summer day, 1959 (the year he traded his old 50-Chevy and bought his Galaxy Ford 500), I saw him go into his house—using the backdoor, my mother had just come down to visit him (he could see her walking from our home to his), and so I knew he’d not be back in the garden for the rest of the evening. They took turns going to each others houses, for the most part, but as time went on, and I got older, it seemed she preferred—his, because of grandpa: it was his house, and he’d be ornery all the time, and—you know, its better left alone. And so that is how it was.
As I was about to say, Ernie went into his house, as I often called him back then: Ernie, and I got to looking at his garden, he had many things growing but somehow I was more interested in how his carrots were growing. The top of his carrots were as round as my writs, and mine were as round as my thumb: this was not just, not fair by any means I felt, and envy set into me, like white on rice. Consequently, I looked here and there, mostly at the backdoor that lead out to a wooden platform, an open porch kind of, to see if Ernie was coming, and he wasn’t. Carefully I dug around and pulled out one big carrot of Ernie’s from the back row by the fence. Then I padded the dirt around it so he’d not expect any dirty deeds (but life is never so sweet is it).
So the deed was done, and I went back home to watch T.V. with grandpa—I hid a few apples in the side of the sofa and across from me was grandpa, who was watching as usual, watching TV and in-between me, watching a western, as he liked; his pipe half out, half lit, in the ashtray burning slowly, him in his sofa chair.
“Vhen you e’er stop eating~” he’d say with his normal mumbling, not looking directly at me, but from the corner of his eye, “…ya, ya, ya, et, eet, eet, and vait tell you got to buy dhe food…” the old Russian never stopped complaining. Anyhow, I had the two other apples in the corner so when he saw me eating the apple, I’d eat the seeds and all (I still do to this day), and when he looked at me again, he kept seeing the one apple, never knowing I had three. He thought I was really eating slowly, two hours to eat one apple. He never was the wiser.
Anyhow, about 9:30 PM, the next day, my bedtime was 10:00 PM, Ernie brought my mother home, walked her home, and they were in the kitchen. My mother asked me to come in the kitchen for a moment, and I did. Ernie was there with a big carrot in his hand, for a moment I thought it was just some vegetables from his garden he was bringing over (he did that quite often), and he said:
“Does this look familiar?”
“No,” I said, “Why?”
“I think it does,” said my mother, with an evil eye, or an inner eye looking through me.
“Well,” she said, “Ernie found this in your garden, and for some odd reason it didn’t seem to belong there with all your little carrots.”
“Yup,” I said (I couldn’t talk my way out of it I knew), adding, “I, I didn’t think taking one carrot would matter, I mean you got all the big ones, I got only small ones.” No logic to my statement, but at eleven years old, has any kid got logic, or all that much to say? I think they were trying to hold back the humor of the situation, but it was theft, and it had to be dealt with.
“Didn’t it seem obvious that it would stand out?” asked my mother (I think my envy blinded me).
I looked a bit anxious for being caught, I guess I was sorrier for being caught, than for taking the carrot, but it proved I couldn’t be a thief: in any case, I said, “I never thought of it.” And that was the truth.
9.
The Corral (North St. Paul, Minnesota; 1952)
I stood there against the fence, within the corral, sunbeams brushing across my face, yellow hay soaking into the drying up mud from the rain yesterday; listening to voices of the people around Dan, and Dan the horse; another horse I don’t know his name, whom was by Dan, were restless or so it seemed; I was listening, watching and not thinking about anything at all even when I heard Dan stomping in the mud like a mad mule, I stood there with my eyes closed for a moment I think they were closed, I seemed to be drifting a bit, I was scared a ting, he was hissing People trying to hold him, someone trying to mount him, kids and people all about; he’s being resistant. Now he’s kicking, I opened my eyes Are you hurt (said a voice)?
Tears pouring down my face
I didn’t make a sound
Tears pouring down my face
I felt a kick into my ribs
Dan must have kicked me, hard to breathe
I felt a kick, a kick, and a kick—yes a kick
I didn’t think Dan would have
Janet held me close to her
He’s just five-year old, Dan
What’s the matter with you!
She grabbed his harness
Slapped his face
Quiet now—quiet down!
I know Dan wouldn’t I know that
She held onto me, I wanted to cry
I wanted to say let me go
Dan
She held him back, pushed his face
Grabbed me from under his legs
How’d I get there?
I was there
Her face was saying, he could
He could strike out again
Her face was saying that
She took my hand and rubbed it
Against his neck—
My ribs hurt
Then she noticed a bee sting
She said so,
Look at the bee sting
Then she noticed me, she smiled
Along the rim of the saddle
Almost between the saddle
My ribs hurt
She noticed that now
There was the—a dead bee
He must had hit him with his tail
Tried to kill the bee, jumping
Now say his name
She told me
My little heart started beating fast
Accelerating
Say it again
I said it three times
I heard a bird
It seemed to mellow me out
I wanted to cry: I sniffled
And tears came out of my eyes
My head seemed numb
Up, out of a—of a; we walked
To the house
(The boarding farm, l952 it was)
That evening in my bunk bed, my blood surged steadily against my ribs (I can feel it now as I write this).
I kept on thinking for a long time: why did Dan kick me, he didn’t see me I think; I think he’s always been my friend. I feed him almost everyday. That’s what I said to myself. I now could hear Janet (the owner of the farm) and the other kids downstairs,
“Quiet,” she said to the kids…I was thought to be sleeping.
I tried to see my bruised ribs, but my neck hurt trying to bend it along with my twisting over to see the backside of the upper part of the rib area.
“Has it stopped?” Janet asked.
She startled me in the dark, I was thinking of Dan, and here she came into the bedroom; I jumped, and my ribs hurt when I jumped.
”Yes, it almost stopped, I think.” So I said.
She put a cool rag on it, against it, told me to hold it
“Damn, if it will not leave a big burse, your mother will see it and I got a lot of explaining to do.”
I heard a phone ring downstairs, Janet turned to hear if it was for her, the voice said, and “Kiddy Corner— she’s busy right now, can she call you back…?” then I heard the phone receiver heavily put back into place.
My face felt cold, in the warm summer night, it was dark in the bedroom. I got thinking about how I’d feed Dan tomorrow, if Janet let me.
Later on that night Janet come back up stairs, to my bedroom with a piece of beef and put it against my swollen rib side, tied it kind of with some gauze-tape.
“You’ll need this for tonight, beef will take the swelling down, it’ll help,” she said, with an unsure smile on her face now. I wanted to feed Dan tomorrow, I wanted to ask her if I could, I mean, I normally could, did this stop things now?
I think my mother’s coming tomorrow, I said to myself, it’s going to be the weekend, and she comes to pick me and Mike up on the weekends, after work from Swifts (the meat packing planet in South St. Paul). Tomorrow is not too far off. I’ll feed Dan and mom will be here about 5:30 PM, and she’ll take us to stay at Grandpa’s; we’re going to move in there for good, soon. I think I’ve been here for a very long time.
I was there for three and a half years, on the boarding farm, and just after I opened up my eyes after Janet went downstairs, I opened up the curtain to see the back area of the farm, where Dan slept. When they told me to stand by the fence pole, and everyone was busy trying to steady Dan, I must had walked to him, no one seeing me, out to him, wanting to ride him, we were all going to ride him, not sure when my turn was, but that is when he kicked me…it was twilight now, ‘I feel fine,’ I told myself, looking out the window; the gable not allowing me to see right above the house, a more extended view. The cow in the neighbors pasture was still out, ‘I wonder when he’ll have to go to sleep?’ I asked myself.
10.
Big Pig
[1957—summer]
[1957—summer] It was a bad year for Mike Russet, and his father; he had gotten cancer, and died. I hadn’t’ known anyone to have died up to this point, it was my first encounter with death: experiencing with the face of someone I had known, met, liked, my very first look at loss; that is, it was my very first stumble upon it, it was a new feeling, kind of like he belonged, and then was gone, that is he belong to this world, he was here, and now he was not, out of it, and not for a week or month, but not to return: prior to this, his father, Mike’s father would take Mike and me out on town trips, like a picnic or so; a few things—not often, but occasionally. And so this story I tell out of sadness, for we laughed our stomach sick, and I think Mike’s father would have loved us such a remembrance.
For me it was always nice that he asked me along, knowing he wanted to be with his son, but Mike wanted me along also, more so (or so it seemed), and his father wanted to please Mike; but I often felt out of place, or even misplaced at times; but I like Mike’s father, my father had left before I was even born. So it was a new feeling if anything that his father accepted me and liked having me along. I was ten and a half years old; Mike was a year younger than I. But I’d remember this one afternoon the rest of my life; oh it must had been about several weeks before he was bed-ridded, when he took both, me Mike and Mike’s mother to a farm outside of the city’s limits, and both us boys kneeling against that farm fence were astounded at something as we looked in the pigpen—and then looked at each other, like the wino we once encountered—we were amazed at what we saw.
Mike’s father kept looking at us boys off and on wondering what we saw: a frown came over his face and we boys were just laughing hilariously; laughing without talking, as bad as with the wino.
“Let me in on the secret, —the joke boys?” his father said to both of us boys, and we looked at one another, stared a moment, holding our laughs inside of us, than looked at his father, then at one another again, then back at the big pig laying sprawled out on the ground, half asleep, a male pig; Mike then checking me out again, for the umpteenth time.
“Come on boys,” his father said, with a curious look.
“Ok, are you sure you want to know?” hilariously laughing, asked Mike, trying to hold back his laughing back but couldn’t—lest his father think the joke was on him (and it was not), and me looking the other way so as not to make Mike laugh any harder than what he was so he could speak,
“But I don’t want mom to hear,” says Mike to his father. And he whispered in his father’s ear as Mike’s mother stepped back and shook her head as if we were all nuts (I think she knew the secret).
“Pop,” Mike said, “Chick and I have never seen such huge—you know what’s before on, on, on anything before….”
And as soon as we just couldn’t get over laughing, and able to tell his father that with a straight face, we busted out laughing until our guts pained us again. His father started laughing more at us boys than at the sleeping pig, shaking his head, looking at his wife, and Mike’s mother shook her head again, said with her squeaky voice,
“I’ll fine out later…not sure if I want to…”—and then looked at the pig as not to spoil the moment for us, the gang now. And we all rested against the gray dried up wooden fence gazing and gazing—as if into wonderland.
Said the father after several minutes later, “Can I pull you boys away from here, away from those big nuts on that pig, and have you seen enough?”
“Oh sure,” said Mike, with both our eyebrows up in the air, and taking our last hard look at the humongous balls of the big—.
11.
The Porch [1960]
[St. Paul, Minnesota; 1960] “I cleaned under the porch, grandpa, as you said; you said yu’d pay me four-dollars…? I cleaned it all this morning.”
“Yu dats god dn aldedy yaw…!” said Grandpa with his ornery Russian rustic voice.
He stood looking at me, kind of staring, not sure as usually if (the Old Russian Bear) if he should believe me.
“…vat you gwin do ef dat rat comes git out, dis crap al-here?”
“You dont think its clean, grandpa?” I said.
He looked at me with that annoyed gaze, kind of a wanting to eat me up look, I was thirteen then, and I think he liked my older brother Mike much more than I, but then I could annoy people I suppose, and for some reason Mike didn’t; or so he had me believe.
“I guess I better clean it again!” I said to Grandpa, watching him check under the porch as if it was the Taj Mahal. Then, as he pulled his body out and up, from under the porch he said, “noa..noa, No! I clen my self…” and he mumbled something else, I couldn’t make it out, a ramble that is; as usual. He stood up looked at me (a serious face now), “dat no good—loks…vike…shit!” Old Grandpa had a hard time speaking English, but he knew them swear words perfect, every letter came out of his mouth flawlessly.
In any case, I left him alone for the afternoon, he’d pay me later I told myself, he was a complainer—moody at times, and this was one of those times; but his word was like gold, if he said he’d pay, he’d pay. I found a softball game going on and joined in, in the empty lot next to our house.
[4:30 PM] Mom had called Mike and I for supper; her voice would echo across the large empty lot, and down Cayuga Street: “OHHHH…Mi…cooo clll—Oh…Chick…time for dinner,” and she’d do the same when twilight came about. It got to the point, we both [my brother and I] felt a little embarrassed that the whole neighborhood heard her calling us; that is as we got older and deep into our teens.
And when I got in for dinner that evening, we had pork chops on the table, and brownies. She cooked pork chops a lot; hamburgers with crushed onions in the hamburger, a lot of chopped onions, with apple crisp pie.
Grandpa saw me eating, and mom was walking back and forth from the kitchen to her bedroom (along side of the dinning room), and crossing through the dinning room, she saw Grandpa in the living room by the T.V. pacing to and from the porch, mumbling “Vat I got to pay, hit I clen the crp out me-sef…” he looked at mom, said, ‘…her, gie to Chick,” it was four dollars for the cleaning: then he went back to his not so good language, “Gd dmn, sn bith, do evy ding me-slf…” on and on and on he went with such language.
Then he went out to the screened in porch, fixed his pillows on the sofa he had out there, and put his pipe in a standup ashtray, and laid down on the coach, as he did so often, in the heat of the summer, and fell to sleep.
12.
The Wino [1958]
Standing in the middle of the sidewalk on a brisk Saturday (forenoon) in the summer of 1958, on a declining hill by St. Joseph’s Hospital in St. Paul (where I was born), nearby there was tenant housing, where my friend, Mike Russet’s family had moved to, moved into a few months prior to this event; we stopped to peer down the street to look at what was happening this Saturday, —stone still we stood, and Mike, as sly as if something was in the makings: which would be to my surprise. Both us boys had seen the wino but only one of us was thinking of a scheme, the other would follow—that of course was me. The wino was finishing up his last drink, he was even licking the rim around the top of the brownish glass bottle to get the last flavor of the substance out; it was a hot summers day.
He, the wino was watching everyone around him from the corner of his eyes, waiting to beg to a passerby for another coin: a client, one that looked merciful enough to feed him a drunk, that is a coin he’d ask for food, but he’d use the money for drinking of course, we saw him do it before: ‘…yes, yes a coin to get rid of me,’ I’m sure he was thinking, ‘I’m worth that much’; it was a small bottle of something he had just polished off, thought Mike, as he looked on the ground, looking at a similar bottle a ½ pint whisky bottle—empty; now that I think about it, —Mike reasoned—diverse thoughts circled his perimeter, —then he noticed on the ground by him—by the wino down the block, about sixty-yards away, still looking about for a sucker—another brown whisky bottle similar, it was what he had just polished off, drank up…small like the one he just saw, one likened to the wino’s bottle he just finished: he whispered something to me, I dare not say it yet.
Said I, with a grin and a nod to my head, “He can’t hear us!”
“Yaw, I suppose,” replied Mike looking down at the wino, almost, just about ready to laugh but holding it back.
“You sure?” questioned Mike, with a doubtful smile I put on my face, a frown that made his upper go up, and part of his face turn pale.
At this point, Mike was not even looking at the wino, and had stepped along side of an extended porch so the wino or no one else could see us, unless they were walking up or down the sidewalk, and no one was. A car passenger could see if he went out of his way to check between two houses—but there was no reason for that, I think. But that was not the case either; it was secure, as Mike asked,
“Anyone coming?” asked Mike, and I replied “No, not yet.”
Mike had filled the bottle up with some yellowish fluid [waist], half it, saying, “Your turn…” with a smirk on his face that wanted to turn into a smile, but for the moment it was stern as it looked at me, trying to infer this was serious business. This was symbolism at its height, symbolism saying, possible, and saying: our friendship is at stake here. I looked deadly into his bold unfriendly eyes, said, “I can’t, I can’t do this…!”
[Sternly I said:] “I’m not bringing it down there,” I told Mike. With a bit of charm and upper-lip sarcasm: he almost produced a laugh, but still he would not allow it, he: Mike started walking down to the wino or derelict.
Within a few minutes Mike had walked the sixty-yards back up the hill and we both watched the drunk unscrew the top of the bottle, the Mike had given him and urinated in. Anticipation was in both our eyes. We could hardly hold our feet still, and I for once I was not breathing, well—hardly breathing. My eyes were like Mike’s I do believe, as big as golf balls.
Said I to Mike, “It is like watching the face of Doctor Jackal and Mr. Hide changing in front of you,” as he started to pour down the… [a pause came]…brownish bottle of liquid.
Then after the fact, when he realized it wasn’t what he thought it was, he became outraged—and lost for words, throw the bottle on the hard concert sidewalk like a madman, the glass and contents shooting in all directions, and his arms went flying in the air upward, his fists scolded us two figures up the hill staring down at him, up the street: us two figures breathed into our nostrils new air. A crowed started forming around the middle-aged drunk: sympathy comes in strange ways.
I, myself was ashamed, I even watched it, participated in it, but it was only until now that reality of the moment took hold of me, of both us boys I suppose. And later on I’d feel kind of, let’s say, somewhat remorseful, that is I never did it again—he did say (Mike—stoutly), ‘never again’. But as soon as that moment passed, and it did pass quickly, you could notice our faces together changing as they looked at the drunk and themselves, it was as if the winos humiliating experienced triggered the biggest laughter I ever experienced.
“Mike!” I said, “Stop it!” But for the most part it was all too late, the wino threw the bottle, his arms were flying in the air, people were looking up at the estranged two figures up the hill, and tears of laughter were coming, rolling off our faces, two kids: one eleven, which was me, and the other Mike ten. I, or we, just couldn’t hold it any longer, especially Mike: I know I blame him more than myself, and perhaps I shouldn’t—oh well; it is how I remember it, or want to. It was a total breakdown of the body into laughter; we were even stomping our feet like bulls, bulls, not sure if we should run or stay laughing, we were both under a fretful attack—almost frozen, paralyzed in astonishment.
As we witnessed the people by the wino pointing their fingers at us, we darted to the back of the building, because we noticed a few of the guys started walking up the block at a fast pace towards us; we both jumped on our bikes racing down town to the Robert Street Bridge. Then, once we arrived, we settled our bikes, looked over the bridge, caught our breath and finished our laughing.
The landing, or dock area was quiet as our eyes peered down onto the Mississippi River. At the same time a dark cloud seemed to be circling our heads, as we insanely laughed again, even to the point of holding our stomachs and trying not to look at each other.
“But he—“ said Mike, and before he could finish his sentence, I responded with, “He what—he asked for it, is that what you were going to say?”
Mike shook his head ‘yes,’ and we both busted out laughing again. And I shook my head—as he nodded his head like before but with more swing to it, thinking what a crazy thing to do and get a laugh over.
[Tired and trying to catch our breath] “You know it was all done in fun, a joke Chick… [Pause] don’t get so, you know, over it.”
“Sure,” I said, and the day went to something else.
13
Grandpa's Reproaching
[The Old Russian Bear: 1957]
Old Grandpa Tony [Anton] swore more than most people prayed, and I’m talking about the clergy. A 4’11 inches tall man, that’s all he stood, I always thought he was at least six foot tall, even when I went to high school, but no, he was four foot, eleven inches tall. It’s not the unpardonable sin, I know—to swear, but if you added them all up, all the cussing words he done in front of me, and then there is 24-hours to the day, it would top the Andes, and then some. But he was kind enough to allow my mother and my brother and myself to live with him, in his house during my formative years. And back in the fifties, it was rough, so I suppose I can say, thanks gramps. But the Old Russian Bear, used to say:
“I tell you vhut you gottaa wtch dem boys Elsie (his daughter and my mother)—dhay mak-a too mch noyce!”
All the time, we had to be like mice.
“Well,” I heard mom say, “I can’t watch them every second of the day?”
Grandpa thought about that for a while, “I gonna thorw dem out!” he’d say. I think he started telling mom that from my thirteenth birthday on: steadily. He liked my brother Mike for some reason: perhaps I didn’t pay him much attention, or for that matter attention. I was very active: meaning, overactive, I could never seem to slow down, and that may have bothered him. Nowadays, they give kids pills up the tuba to slow them down: back then, mom would say: ‘Go run it off…” and out the door I went, and I’d run a mile here or there, and come back and eat up a storm (my son and my grandson are the same way, but now they want to give them pills, pills: have them run it off, that is how I got rid of it).
“Yes,” mother would say,” I’ll tell him to play out side more…” (I was but ten, then, at the time). I think it all started one day when I was in Ernie’s 1950 Chevy (my mother’s boyfriend for forty-years), and mom was looking at me in the backseat, and I was about seven years old then, and I asked about this and that: many, if not too many questions, never could be settled too long, and she noticed that, and would try to answer my numerous questions, and she’d get tired, and say:
“Stop! You’re wearing me out with questions.”
So when I got older I bought an encyclopedia set and read it a few times from start to finish: a to z. One year I read 400-books, after all my other activities. I slept four to six hours all my life, until I got ill, and slept 10 to 14 hours; made up for all that lost sleep.
—Then Grandpa would put his pipe in his mouth, pace the kitchen, mumbling,
“Them god…d…m..kids.”
He didn’t want us boys to stay with him in the house, but he didn’t want mom to leave, she did all the work, and bought the TV and the furniture, and did his laundry, and bought the groceries: she was an economic asset for him, as he was for her (or us). He bought the meat for the Sunday meals, paid the heat and water bill, and phone bill. They had a good system going I suppose. I always prayed mom would take us kids out of that environment, but it was as it was, and it gave me a father figure I suppose: he had good work ethics, and I suppose I got that from him. In any case, mom, she’d reinforce, by telling me, “Nobody’s going to kick you out.” And he never did. When I grew up: went to Vietnam, and came back home for a visits, Grandpa, being in WWI, was proud, but he still had that bear in him, and one day he said something, and I got mad, and I wasn’t a kid anymore, and I said:
“Grandpa, don’t swear at me, if you don’t want me here I’ll leave, but if you swear once more I’m going to knock you on your ass!” and I walked away angry. I had always felt bad about telling Grandpa that, even to this day, it really wasn’t called for: I could have walked away like always, I just wanted to let him know, I was not that little kid you could pull his ears, when you didn’t like what was happening. And I was sorry for that, as I had said—but I did make up for it, I think. When he was too old (meaning, 83-years old, he worked up to 78) and his children were coming over to count his money (he had several children living at the time), and was threaten by them, I heard about it, and made myself present when they were present, and told everyone: the threatening was over, that if I heard about it again, I’d throw them out, everyone out. I think, Grandpa may have heard it from the dinning room, not sure what or how he felt, but I guess, if it made up for that bad remark, so be it.
A Poetic Story—The Potato Patch [1957-58]
[Written 1/31/2005; #1183] SPM
One day—oh, I suppose I was, say ten,
I asked my mother to ask my grandfather
For a garden plot—, somewhere in our
Backyard:
And somehow, she got him to agree—;
Twisted his knees, perhaps—I don’t
Know—but the Old Russian Bear
Was hard to please…!
It wasn’t a garden to plow or hoe,
Just a patch, a little plot in the backyard
By the fence: that’s all.
And there I planted my first garden—
Potatoes….
It was kind of neat (so I thought), hidden
From anyone passing by; until I found out
Potatoes grow underground—
(not on top), and yes, it was
A mess, thereafter: digging, weeding,
Watering.
It seemed the season would never end,
But I did stick with it; and then came the
Day, the great day, to pluck those
Potatoes from their abode, and to show
Them to my mother and grandpa:
I was quite proud.
And when I did, when I pulled those
(roots and all) potatoes—from
Under the earth, I was devastated to
To find out: the eyes were bigger
Than the potatoes.
Traumatic I took it at first, I think
I even cursed
Advice? I have none, but I’ll tell you,
I never tried to grow potatoes again.
14.
The Brick (1952)
I was only five-years old back then, when this occurrence took place: the ‘brick,’ situation; my brother Mike, was seven, the antagonist not sure who it is or was, but Steve the owner’s son was about seven at the time, and Jill was nine, the owner’s daughter. Jill used to come into my bedroom: about dusk, I was on the top bunk, so she had a hard time reaching me, but she did: poking the pin in me, she was my anatomist if anything (and her mother would tell her to stop, but she didn’t until I told my mother and it somewhat halted); her mother owned the foster-farm in North St. Paul, Minnesota, and she was a jealous daughter, for her mother’s attention: Janet, whom I called Aunt Janet, took a liking to me. We’d stay there four nights out of the week, and would go with my mother, who worked at Swifts Meat Packing Plant, go home with her on the weekends to her apartment, where she was staying, and at the times, at our grandfather’s house, which eventually we’d move to, after the aunts and uncles moved out of course. It was a Russian extended family situation at my grandfather’s house, in St. Paul, Minnesota, on Arch Street (109).
During those days, at the foster-farm called: “Kiddy-Korner,” we’d help build a big swimming pool in the back of the farm house; she owned about four acres of land, and she had some thirteen-children to care for during the day and there were about four of us during the nights; she [meaning: Janet] was forever fighting with the authorities over the right to have us stay overnight, so it seemed.
But as I was about to say, Janet decided to make a swimming pool in the back, way backyard, by the fence, the cow meadow, adjacent to her property. In those days it was not easy, you didn’t just call in the pool man. But you did call in a bulldozer to level the land out, and then got one of those big tractors with a scoop on it to dig out a big hole, which she did, in the shape of the old cast-iron bathtubs. It must have been several feet deep: perhaps either or so, the water and the sides another foot or two, above the water, for it went over my head (the sides) a number of feet. But the water had a gradation, or gradual increasing steepness to it, which got deeper as you went forward; thus, as you went further into it, the deeper it became: north to south.
Well, during this process of building the pool, I couldn’t do much, but I helped carry a brick or two, at a time: laying them down on the extending tiles. Let me explain: after the hole was dug, they put some kind of rocks in it, around it, and other things, and then tar if I recall right: then pout more tar over the tiles: roof tiles, or so I remember them to be. The pool was perhaps fifteen feet wide, eight feet deep, and thirty feet long. Under the tiles was that black tar again, and I’d put a brick on the tiles sticking out like weeds, that seemed to bend around the dirt, and tar under it, but stuck up somewhat nonetheless. At any rate, the brick would hold it down, so it would not get ripped off or apart, and one rip led of course to another, and bigger ones, and then you’d have to find where the hole was and tar it back up again, and so forth and so on: so it could become significant, should you not use preventive measures.
Well, during the building process, Mike, Jill, and Steve were up their playing around by the pool, trying to help, and so were the other kids: a few of the workers, likewise, and myself. When I looked up this one early afternoon, when I looked up, up I saw everyone was staring–and Janet saying: “Who did it, who threw that brick!~?” And tears came from my eyes; I saw my brother drop to his knees, his hands over his eyes and head: blood coming from his scalp. No one said a word (I’m not sure I knew what to do but cry), but the memory would stick into the mind, as well as Mike’s head. Well, we all survived though those far off days, but it was a sad few days after that.
15.
The Big Mouse [1959]
[St. Paul, Minnesota; 1959]
“You boys upstairs go on to bed now—go to sleep, make sure you’ve turned off all the lights,” mother was saying. “Go on now!” she repeated herself, hearing me getting into bed; Mike was lying back in bed with his cloths on. I sat back up a moment, to say my prayers, on my bed in the hot attic bedroom, my brother Mike on the other side of the room, both of us about three feet between the window, and no wind.
I heard our door, which led into her bedroom, close downstairs, she’d be in bed soon I figured; but first she’d go and see how grandpa was, and be back in the bedroom thereafter. Mike was preparing, just waiting, as if he had it all timed.
“I’m going out tonight, as soon as moms in bed,” said Mike.
“Yes,” I said, as he was wiping his forehead of sweat from the heat, there was little if any ventilation in that attic, and one window on each side of the upstairs attic did little to cool the place, it had to cross the whole length of the house to the other window, and the chimney was in the way so we got no cross breeze to mention.
Mom was sleeping now, and Mike grabbed his keys, out the window he went, tucked the screen back into place climbed over the porch by the kitchen—which was over by the stairway, on the other side of the attic, opposite from where we slept. He climbed down the roof, to a ladder he had set against the small porch, he’d come through the front door when he’d come home, and put the ladder back in place as soon as he descended to the ground, as he did often. He’d be romping around with the guys in the neighborhood in a short time I figured.
—It was 2:30 AM, he came back I could hear him coming up the stairs, step by step; he sounded like a creeping something. I heard mom down stairs, Mike had to go through her bedroom, and then open the door to the attic, and then climb them stairs, to get back into his bed. I heard mom again,
“Go away, get awy…” she sounded, “…damn mouse…get out of here!” her arms had even come out from under her sheets, shooing the mouse away in a combative way; but it was my brother, he was the big mouse. (I was but twelve-years old, back then, Mike two years older than I).
I heard Mike get in bed,
“Mom been sleeping all night?” he asked.
I was barely awake, “Dont know…I think so.”
He then laid on top of his covers, “…man it’s hot.” He said waving something in front of his face to cool himself off.
“If mom asks, I was up here all night ok?”
“You mean lie to her?”
“No, not really, you were sleeping, and I went down to go to the bathroom, and you just heard me coming back up and woke up, so you don’t know one way or the other—right?”
“Yaw, I suppose…go to sleep…”
The arc light was shinning through the screened-in window; it lit the street and sidewalk, and the tree in front of our house, and above the porch’s gable, right into our attic bedroom. The fair was going to start pretty soon, it was August, and it started the last week of August, and went up to the first day of school. Thinking about that, I fell back to sleep. Incidentally, my mother never found out who was the: Big Mouse.
16.
Grandpa's Pipe [50s & 60s]
[1959] With his mouth open, slightly opened I should say, grandpa’s mouth mumbled (from long habit I expect, I presupposed—back then, back in the late 50s and early 60s (when we all lived in an extended family type setting)) and I was but ten years old, there about: take or give a year or two))—and I suppose from years of practice) automatically opened (insulting whomever at the moment, was by him, not directing it to the: noun (or: person, place or thing), just swearing away, swearing under his breath…in his broken English: ‘…vat dam hell matter dhis fu…kn pepe, god…dam son na bitch…!” and when his mouth opened, things leaked out of his mouth like molasses); he watched me move about in the kitchen, looking over his spectacles, or glasses he seldom wore, except if he wanted to read the paper, which he couldn’t read but every fifth word in English, the old Russian Bear —then grandpa started to strike his match at the same time of his mumbling and sucking off the stem of his pipe, trying to ready himself to light his tobacco inside this black framed hole that held the tobacco: and brown bottom drum called a pipe; stained from a decade’s use I expect; his mouth still moving, still talking to the pipe or himself, not sure, he couldn’t have been talking to me, he seldom did, perhaps a half dozen times in ten-years, and today was not my lucky day, or my unfortunate day: as I was saying or about to say, he swept his hand backwards, the match pulled away from the lit tobacco in the furnace of the pipe, the steam of the pipe he was still sucking onto make sure it stayed hot and lit.
Still talking to himself, I was as I said before a ten to twelve year old kid, looking about, not at anything in particular, perhaps making a peanut butter sandwich, or drinking a glass of milk: glancing at grandpa now and then, and pacing about, around in the kitchen as if I was at the Alamo looking here and there for the incoming enemy: that in itself annoyed grandpa: he’d always mumble to my mother: “…vay cant dat boy of yor play outside…goddam it?” (he’d pause a moment, turn about and swear): ‘…dam son of bitch, kick his ass out…!”
It was summer, mother was at work, Grandpa semi retired now, he paced the living room like a wounded leopard, and it often reminded me of that invisible rabbit, James Stewart the actor portrayed in the movie “Harvey,” I mean who was he talking to, like James Stewart, perhaps the invisible Harvey.
Now grandpa was puffing away, and I got thinking—that’s cool, the pipe and all, but it takes a lot of work and coordination. I can’t remember exactly, but I do remember being fascinated with his pipe, and I reason it came out when I got older, for as a young adult, I purchased a pipe, and became a copycat, not realizing I was, but I was.
As a result, when I see a man with a pipe nowadays, I often think of grandpa, but even more so, the quite life we had, the smoke of the pipe circulating the living room, and then it fading into nothingness it was all about an unforgettable decade for me, it would rest on magical air, I’d think; it all seems so somber now, now that I’m getting to his age.
17.
The Wiggly Tooth [1958]
It was a matter of extraction, I was eleven-years old, and my tooth wiggled, and wiggled, and wiggled too much, too long, and it had to come out one way or another. Even at eleven I knew this, but barely. I was at my mother’s boyfriend’s house, Ernie, as we (my brother and I) got used to calling him, adding the Uncle on it, making it: Uncle Ernie, hence, that was the long version.
Ernie and my mother had been watching T.V., she normally went there about 6:00 PM, to about 9:00 PM each night: she left at 9:00 to 9:30 PM, usually: the reason being, she could get back home in time (for we simply lived next door, kind of, an empty lot between the two houses, his and my grandfather’s that is, where us boy’s and my mother lived with my grandpa): anyhow, she’d get home before 10:00 pm, so she could call us boys (Mike, my brother, and myself) back into the house (as we’d be someplace in the neighborhood, but we always heard her voice calling), to get ready for bed at 10:00 PM.
This evening—the time must have been somewhere between 7:00 PM to 8:30 PM, when the issue came up—this evening I happened to be at Ernie’s house (it was summer, and I was on summer vacation from school), complaining to my mother about my loose wiggle tooth. As I complained, and she listened, turned from the T.V., set, both her and Ernie were watching, I think ‘Gunsmoke,’ or perhaps it was ‘The Red Skeleton,’ for some odd reason those two shows come to mind: Ernie said, after putting his popcorn down (they often made it while watching T.V.:
“Tie your tooth to a string, and put the other end of the string around the doorknob, then slam the door quickly, that will save you a lot of time thinking about your tooth, and you will not have to go to the dentist!”
So said Ernie, in a quick, almost unemotional way, as if it was like plucking a weed. I looked at him strangely; my eyebrows perhaps hit the top of my forehead,
“Doorknob,” I said.
“Yes, doorknob, and I’ll get you the string.”
He got up and put the string around the doorknob, I looked at my mother, she didn’t say a word; I then looked at Ernie, “Really!” I said, baffled.
“That’s how we did it when we were kids,” Ernie said, as simple and plain as the night was dark: strangely dark. I think I started to laugh, not out of it being funny, but out of not knowing what else to do, for now the string was hanging on the doorknob, the T.V. was playing, my mother was eating popcorn, and I was staring at the doorknob and back at Ernie, and back and forth my eyes went.
I had learned something about myself I suppose, perhaps it was then, or earlier, I can’t remember exactly, that being: I didn’t want to play games, but wanted to get down to business and on with life, and so daringly, I took that string, as Ernie helped me to tie it around my tooth, yes indeed I did, we tied it right around that tooth, quickly so I’d not change my mind. I had never heard of such a thing, but I had not heard of many things, at eleven-years old who has, and I suppose we trust our adults do we not: to a certain degree anyways, or at least I did back then, back in 1958, when I lived on Cayuga Street, in St. Paul, Minnesota.
It was all facially confirmed, I mean, my mother’s face said: go ahead, or so I read it as that. Ernie’s face said: what you waiting for; and if I had had a mirror my face would have read: do it or don’t, but don’t think about it for eternity.
So Ernie and I tied the string around my wiggle tooth, and he stepped back for the big bang, and I opened the door that opened outward, towards me, and I slammed it, and the door shut with my eyes closed. When I opened my eyes the string was dangling, I figured it had slipped off, that is, it slipped over my tooth off of it, and I’d have to try it again, do it over, but as I went to fetch the string, there was my tooth, to my amazement. I put my finger into my mouth, and discovered the tooth was no longer there of course, rather a little hole, and empty space between other teeth.
I now had the tooth in my hand and asked my mother: “Can I have a dollar for my tooth, I still believe in the tooth fairy…” it was a rhetorical question of course (I didn’t believe, but I was at that age where I was a ting daring), and she looked at me with an upper lip, and said, “I believe you can, “ with a slur, and pulled out three quarters, saying, “it’s all the change I got, I’ll have to owe you a quarter.” And that was that.
Note: When I woke up this morning, I had a dream, it was not about my tooth, but a tooth on the left side of my mouth was hurting—nonetheless; and so as I wiggled about, trying to get into a better resting position, half asleep, this occurred to me, the wiggly tooth, that took place back in 1958, the story of my tooth being extracted by way of a doorknob. It is true, what one man said long ago: it is the accumulation of little things in life that make life worth living and remembering, for there are only a few big ones in between; thus, life is made up of little things; something like that he said, and how true it can be. 4/16/2006
Grandpa’s House
[Written in May and June, 2006 while in Peru]
Stories written in May, 2006 [in Lima, Peru] specifically for a book that was going to be called Grandpa’s House, but more stories were added, and the name changed; thus, stories 18 thru 22 fall into this category.
Grandpa’s House
18.
Dust Under the Bed [1954]
I can’t remember what I did, but it got my mother mad to the point I ran and hid under my bed. She was house cleaning it seems (now that I look back). It was on the weekend, and it was not the very cold part of the year, for there was a fire in the space heater in the living room, and it was on. I was perhaps seven-years old at this moment. We lived with Grandpa in those days, on Arch Street, in St. Paul, Minnesota. I ran, and remained quietly under the bed, it was unpleasant to say the least, but I felt safe for the moment. I squirmed to the far side of the wall, so my mother could not drag me out from under it—yet I found out she had no intentions to put that much work into this episode of my life young life.
She came into the living room where the television was, it was new, our first black and white T.V., and we all marveled at it. It looked as big as a doghouse, a bloodhound’s doghouse. The bedroom was next to the living room.
“You better come out from under there unless…” she hesitated, gave me a beam of a smile, and she then walked away, just like that, it made me think,
“Unless what?”
For a time she sat in that big sofa type armchair, in the living room, in silence doing something. She was always doing something: sewing or mending, washing or cooking, or going to work at the stockyards; always keeping herself occupied with things and thoughts. I was being filled with her face and figure in the chair to the exclusion of all else.
Occasionally she’d look down towards me, as I hid in the dark corner under the bed.
“I’m going to be waiting right here, don’t worry, I’m not going anyplace” she said, promisingly, “you will be hungry, perhaps tired, and all that dust there—you will have to come out sometime, and I will simply be waiting.”
And then I started coughing—as if she had ordered the dust to be activated to annoy me—(I always did tell her in later years, she should have been given a PHD in psychology); I learned that day, the power of suggestion is nothing to fool around with, if someone knows how to use it.
“What are you going to do, just lay there all day?” Mother told me after about forty-five minutes under the bed.
In a pouting manner, I said, “I don’t know…!” I halfway cried, I didn’t blame my mother for her actions, and she never once did over punish me (or so I feel), but I was molding and my new found formal reason was working overtime, and she knew I suppose, she knew she had to take time off to teach, punish, or discipline, lest I end up in life having no limits.
And so I thought under that bed, on that dusty old hard floor: she could wait forever, she’s comfortable, I’m not, and what the heck is a thrashing or licking, compared to this, I mean, it would be over in a minute, and here I am 45-minutes later, torturing myself. Bingo, a light came on. And like a little soldier I came out—defeated but no more dust in my face.
I marched up to her and lay over her knees and got what I expected, and it was over. So what did I learn? Perhaps not to compete, if you can’t.
Written at the Restaurant “Angello,” 5/16/2006
19.
2nd Fight [1957]
Grandpa’s House
I was ten-years old, and we were about to make a move from Arch Street in St. Paul, Minnesota, to Cayuga Street, and I was walking my neighborhood feeling pretty good about that, a ting scared of what it would be like, but nonetheless, an exciting time for me to live I thought; one of my friends from St. Louis School was moving also, and it was sad to say goodbye, and I felt he was so lucky, now I was part of this panorama (or so I felt). I passed the top of the hill, we lived down it: almost in the middle of the hill it seemed, and I saw nearby the monkey, the old man kept in his backyard, funny I thought, a monkey, I’ve seen it many times, but this day was different, in a month or so I’d be gone, perhaps this would be the last time I saw his money. I snuck a few times (in previous years) in his backyard to see that monkey; the old man chased me away whenever he caught staring at his monkey, a few feet from him (or her). And the grocery store, more on the candy level for me, was about four blocks away, I was somewhere in-between, and crossing an empty lot.
It was my last year at St. Louis School, and I had just got my polio shot. As I was now going on 10-years old, almost, but not quite; thus, as I was walking through the empty lot, six boys followed me. A few looked familiar, vaguely though. One of the six boys came up to me, left the grips of the other five, and pushed me, shoved me for no reason; excited, and confused I said, “Why…” couldn’t think of another word. Perhaps he didn’t like my red hair, or my Irish temper, or my Russian bulldog head.
I looked at him again, he looked angry, and he pushed me again, and I pushed him, but I pushed him so hard, you could hear him fly unto the ground with a thump. He got back up, looked at the other five, and was unsure what to do now. I was asking him, and myself at the same time: why do you want to fight me, what did I do. There was no real answer, it was as I guessed, my red hair I suppose. And when you get five men or boys together, they normally go over the edge in such case, as this one would prove.
“I just don’t like you,” said the boy, and he pushed me again, and I pushed him again, and he fell again onto the ground, and got madder, but was not capable of doing much beyond falling. But then the circle of boys got closer to me, they surrounded me, pushed me back and forth like a yo-yo… and I fell a half dozen times, and when I got up, they pushed me back down again (there was more pushing going on than punches, if I remember correct). I assured myself I would not, would not give them tears, (what they all wanted to see I believe), so I grabbed sand and threw it in their faces, jumped up, and ran back down the hill to my home, Grandpa’s house where I lived. I was much faster than they, and so I was saved, but now the tears came.
Mother was in the kitchen, she saw me crying and asked, “What happened?” then she examined me, my cloths were dirty, not torn: had they been she would have gotten mad at the kids and perhaps ran to their parents house and asked them to pay, but again I say, it was pride coming out in the form of tears, and no worn to shreds, cloths. She looked, “Sorry,” she said, “but I can’t do a thing for you, if you want to win a fight, you got to learn how to fight, or run.” Her philosophies in life were simple.
Perhaps that is why, when we moved to the house on Cayuga Street, I started weight lifting, and in the years to follow learned Karate, and out of the many fights I had, I can’t remember losing one, but I must have I’m sure.
20.
A Double $500
[Grandpa’s House]
I was fourteen-years old, in 1962, living on Cayuga Street in Grandpa’s house, and both my brother and I knew of Grandpa’s wine cellar, in the basement; Mike, my brother had visited it a few times with his homemade crafted key, and drank his and my portion of Grandpa’s 140-proof, vodka, and some of his wine and beer. I never did, not sure why, just didn’t, and one day Mike told me he did, I had never caught him doing it, nor tried to. And grandpa was asking my mother: how come his beer was missing; of course Grandpa, didn’t think Mike would do such a thing, he was his Golden boy, you could say, and so my name came to my mother’s attention, via, Grandpa. But I was innocent, of any wrong doing in that area.
It wasn’t long after that information was given to me by my brother, that my curiosity got the best of me, and I thought I could carve a key like Mike out of a nail, and I did, just like that, so simple I thought, and opened the wine cellar door. Yes, I told myself, yes, it was all there, the wine, the beer, and the vodka, plus a few other bottles of this and that. And it was all laid neatly on old papers. Very old paper; so old they had turned from its original color, to an antique dark brown. Some of the papers dated in the 30s, some in the 40s and a few in the early 50s.
I was more interested in the old papers than the booze, and so I started to read them, pick them up; move the bottles here and there. One of the papers still had its sports section in it, said something about the Baseball Team, the Saints, winning or losing, not sure, but in Minnesota in 1962, we had a team called the Twins, a baseball team, and here was the Saints, prior to them, so it was interesting. And as I looked and read, I wanted to keep some of the old papers, and perhaps, replace them with new ones, not sure what I was going to do; before I could make up my mind, two $500-dollar bills fell out from under one of the papers.
I was in awe, stood in semi-shock for a moment—stone still. I had never seen a $100-dollar bill, let alone, $500 dollar bills, and here were two. I heard roomers that Old Man Beck (the previous owner of the house) had hidden his money, and then died, and his children sold my grandfather the house. But then, it seems not uncommon for such mysterious stories to come to light like that, when a loner dies in a big house; when in essence, there is no money in most cases. But here it was, $1000 –dollars, so perchance they were right, the old man indeed had some bucks. On the other hand, could it be my Grandfather’s? So I deduced. Of course I wanted it to be Old Man Beck’s, so I could keep it and sleep at night.
Well, I took the money went to talk to my friend Lormor, he lived two houses away (a year older than me), and his brother Tom (in his mid to late 20s) was selling a 1956 Oldsmobile. I explained to him about the money, but no one else, and he talked to his brother Tom. And I guess I thought at that time, all was fixed, and all I needed was to have the car put into my name, if in fact it could be so easy. But before that took place, other issues arose.
Said Lormor on the phone:” Chick, my father came home, asked Tom how on earth does a fourteen year old boy come up with $1000-dollars? I think they are going to come over to your house and talk to your mom…”
I guess Tom didn’t say too much I’m sure he wanted the deal to go thought he had the money now.
The next thing that took place was a knock at my door, and Tom, Lormor, and the father were there, and my mother answered it. I think I wanted to hide, grandpa was someplace in the living room, and my heart was leaping everywhichway.
The father explained that I had given two $500-dollar bills to Tom, and was it really mine to give. Lormor had not explained everything to his father up to this point; he played dumb, you could say.
Well, the money was given back to my mother, whom talked to Grandpa about it, and he of course said it belonged to him, and accused me of drinking his beer and wine now; if my brother was under suspicion, he was no longer. But was it Grandpa’s money. I knew where he hid his, under the stairs, and he was not as made at me for taking $1000-dollars, than he was for me not cleaning under the front porch one summer a few years back. So it made me think. It still does.
21.
Woodview Detention Center [1961]
[Grandpa’s House]
Part I
Scene: A cell in a holding facility at Woodview Detention Center in St. Paul, Minnesota, the summer of 1961. The cubicle, cell or room, however one may want to see it, is furnished with an iron cot, and me, the occupant; I am 14-years old, and I am required to be in here for my first 24-hours at the facility before going to a larger cell with (perhaps) other kids (or as they call us, delinquents). The cell is clean, perhaps too clean, and not much in it. The floor shines, tile like substance, as are the walls, brick style. It is late in the evening, a breeze lingers, brings a chill, a ting of mist perhaps from the nearby Mississippi River.
I stand silent in my cell, a bit intoxicated, a little disorientated, fogy with a T-shirt on, a pair of worn jeans, my hair must be messy, I really can’t see it clear, though the little door window with a screen through it; I can see the other cells thought, and I seem satisfied with the way I look, my appearance. I am well toned, my muscles that is, from weightlifting, running track and gymnastics. No tattoos; I am considered to be a good-looking kid, for the most part.
—My brother, Mike, went to Redwing, a few steps up from where I am, in the incarceration field, likened to ‘Boys Town,’ I suppose (he is two years my senior).
In a few days I will go to court for under age drinking—the judge, he is the key here, my mother will be with me, notably the judge will want to give me mercy (my first offence), but I will say ‘No!’ to this offer of kindness (perhaps at this time I seen it as pity); this will be the only time see my mother cry in her life (I know she ((perchance)) has cried before, but I have not ever seen her do so.
“Why?” asks the judge “do you torture your mother like this, and slash at me with pride?”
I had told the judge to send me to jail, to Redwing, like my brother, who was presently there. Said the judge with difficulty trying to figure me out, “The police found you sitting on a case of beer in the playgrounds by Cayuga Street, next to your house, called ‘Indian’s Hill,” drunk, and all you had to say was: an old drunk bought the beer for you.”
Not sure if that was a question or a statement, but I didn’t say a word, I felt bad my mother was crying, and the judge was right, my pride had gotten in my way, so I left him no choice but to lock me up. And here I am standing in this cell looking right and left down and up the corridor.
Part II
Odd. Chick or Dennis, as I was called [ds]. Nobody gets much fresh air in a cell, so it seems, and its worse in the summer. I paced the floor, knowing there was no way out. Counted the bricks in the cell on each side of the walls, 245, that is when I stopped counting and listened to the sounds of the corridor. People snoring, talking, doors from the staff opening and shutting, flashlights checking on everyone, even me; all nightlong. I heard Pat Boones new song, “Moody River,” it fit this time and place, it was as if it was written and sung just for me. They must have been playing it in the office down the hall.
Morning. “Want some breakfast?” said a voice standing outside my door; I got up, “Yeah!” I said, and the door opened and he put the try on a steel gray looking desk across from my bed, and left.
I was surprised the morning came so quick. I got thinking: is there a warden to this place? Then I saw folks being taken to the back outside area, fenced in of course, for sports. I saw a bit envious, and yet I had another 18-hours to go in this cell before I could join the rest.
About this time of my incarceration I had asked myself ‘why,’ and left it at that. I didn’t know at the time but I’d spend two weeks here, a death sentence to me almost. And at the end of the two weeks, my attitude would change. I learned from this experience, if anything, you change, or there will be people willing to spend a lot of time trying to change you. But that of course would call for a readjustment of mind-set, and/or way of thinking.
Egg Shell
I felt I was in an eggshell, with two windows, and I was witnessing the world go by. I knew I was in a holding area after a week, and the judge was going to come out and see me. I was hoping I’d not have to remain here two weeks, but I was wrong, the judge wanted to make a point, and he did.
The interesting thing I discovered was, I begged to be allowed the second day, to mop the whole building, facility, the floors, just to be out of the eggshell. And as the few Sunday’s came, I went to church, to get out of my cell, and on Saturday’s, I went to craft shop for the same reasons. When I was locked up, I felt like I needed to vomit, I was gasping for air. I said to myself, calm down, be cool, like everyone else, and I did, got to go to the big aquarium, the cell down the hall with the four teenagers in it, like me; I thought that was a great reward.
Written 5/18/2006, at the Café Angello, Lima, Peru
22.
Grandpa Was Always Old
[1956-1967: Elegy]
Grandpa was old—he was very, very old, it seems all my life he was old. I know now, looking back, how many years he lived, 83-years [died: 1974], but he looked old at forty, perhaps fifty. I’m fifty-eight, I often wonder if I look old, as old as he looked to me; whatever the case, he was very old to me. Something gray and cold and at times hurtful, that been around forever, he was part of that. He personified that to me, to others, but particular to me.
I’m sure Grandpa never thought when he was gone, someone would write stories about him, many of them, and in the stories they tell of this younger man, me, with a sense of humor I hope, and everyone knows, Grandpa does not have to have grace, or lightness of touch, a dream of beauty breaking through the sun beams coming to earth. Grandpa can be Grandpa.
O, those who knew him shall have many good memories, some that other people will never have, because of him.
Long ago, when he was the owner of a restaurant, downtown in St. Paul, Minnesota, when I was a kid, I used to go eat there [1956-19??]: a hamburger, pie and coke; I always had the same. He’d give it to me free, and sometimes he’d make me pay, sometimes not, but he’d always walk away saying: “…godam kids all da like is da-hamburger, coke, hamburger, coke…” if indeed that was all he was saying, I never got past that, couldn’t make out the rest (the old Russian Bear).
His friend, who helped him with the restaurant, told me he got robbed a few times, but then later on in years to come, when he was going to sell the cafe, Grandpa said about his friend, to me: “godam son-bitch, crroook…he steal everyding from me, fu..k ass…” oh well I’d say, just give him a ride home.
This is a real picture of Grandpa. He was always old in spirit, and at the end of his life, I don’t think he knew what to do with it.
He was trampling through his lilac bushes during the last days of his life, pacing a path in the house from his porch to the kitchen; the ceiling was his sky full of stars now. He got old, so very old quick, and up and died, but it seems I never saw him get old, he just was always old, and then died. I suppose I didn’t see him get old because he was always old to me.
I think Grandpa did all he wanted to do in life, his road was long and we: my brother, my mother and myself, are all better off today because he let us live with him so long ago, had he not, who knows what would have taken place.
23.
First Sight of Death [1956-57]
[Grandpa’s House]
I had a passion for life, always have had it: you live it, or experience it, so I’ve learned; I needed to try almost everything that came to my mind, if possible—even look death in the face at nine-years old. I can’t even remember when it started, this impulsiveness of mine, nor can I say it has stopped; no, not even at 58-years old; perhaps it is a lot of nonsense. ‘Dang it all, that’s the way it is,’ I’d say, and go do it—and that’s the way it was, like it or not: it was my first sight of death (in 1956 or was it 1957, I can’t remember the exact year), and I shall not forget the moment when I followed Mrs. Larose, my elderly babysitter one afternoon, one summer to the morgue, when the police notified her that her separated husband had died of a heatstroke in a car; left in the car for two days, and alcohol over his breath.
Here I stood in the police morgue, a little room, with a silent little group of dead people, corpses. I don’t recall any windows in the room, all these bodies were laid out, covered like fish, this was my own sight of death, half death, I’ve yet to look it in the face: face to face. Then the moment came when the policeman pulled the white sheet away from her husbands face, to be identified, then I saw him: face to face, inches, or perhaps a few feet away. I was nine or ten years old, and death was odd to me, it was a bloated body, a terrifying body, discolored, not normal—this was death’s first look into my young face. I had known him slightly, seen him a few items at Mrs. Larose’s house, and talked to him. “Yes,” that’s Ed, my husband,” said Mrs. Larose.
My warm blooded insides, turned cold suddenly, I turned about and walked to the arch of the door, stood there a moment, it was like a winter night inside of me, in a summer afternoon.
As far as her story goes, I did not know why they were separated, or if it was a divorce; I heard he was a womanizer, and alcoholic, that is to say, that was her side. I never know his side.
Written at EP/Afternoon of 5/19/2006, Lima, Peru
24.
“Liver or Steak?”
[Grandpa’s House/1956]
I never heard the end of this story, matter-of-fact, I had it told to me so much (for 45-years), I’m surprised I forgot to write about it before. Oh well, better late than never. Oh well, here we go, we lived on Arch Street, I was ten-years old then, it was in the year 1956. I was in the backyard playing, it was dinnertime, perhaps about 4:00 PM, and my mother had come home from Swift’s and Company, a meat packing company she worked at, out in South Saint Paul, Minnesota. She was now calling us in, Mike, my brother, two years older than I, he went in first, as I gathered a few items up, at the same time I left my Fire engine outside, and slowly walked through the screened in door. Mike liked liver, and I preferred steak, matter-of-fact, I hated liver, but seldom did we get steak, and usually ended up with liver, I opted for peanut butter sandwich on liver nights. This was not appeasing my mother in the least, save, she didn’t want to push it down my throat, so she left well enough alone.
“Dinner time!” My mother called, and we both came into the house, sat at the kitchen table, as my mother went into the icebox, where below was the dried ice to keep everything cold. There on my plate was some meat. I examined it, it looked a bit strange to me, and my mother knew I didn’t like liver.
“It’s steak, don’t worry about it—just eat it.” She said, convincingly.
I looked at it again, it didn’t look like steak, it was a thin steak I told my mother, if indeed it was steak, and there was no bone or fat on it. A funny steak to be sure, I told myself, but she said it was, so perhaps it was.
I seemed always to be hyper, over stimulated in my youth; actually, it was my life style to be always anxious, restless, so it seemed. I got bored easily. So I looked at the steak, thinking, dusk was around the corner, I’d eat it quickly, and get back outside and play a bit. So I ate heartily.
“How is the steak?” asked my mother, she had a peculiar smile on her face when she said that; actually, she usually didn’t ask and it seemed to find an odd corner in my mind and rest. I looked at her and said, “It’s fine…mom,” and continued to eat and finished it finally.
“Fine… you say, so you liked the steak, without the bone?” She said.
“Yaw, its fine mom,” I said about to get up, wash my hands before I went back out side; I’d take the garbage out with me, for it was my brother’s turn to do the dishes, and me the garbage, we took turns each week or sometimes a month a time then we’d trade jobs.
“You really liked the steak Haw?” My Mother said, again.
I hesitated for a second, “Sure…” I said, grabbing the garbage bag, “it was liver I gave you (she added), see, you really can’t tell the difference between steak and liver.” At that very moment, I started to try and vomit up the liver, and she just looked at me strangely and said, “Stop that, you said you liked it.”
And I said, “You tricked me…and I bet it was steak anyway.”
“No,” she said, convincingly, “it was liver, and that proves you like liver, when you think it is steak.”
Well, what could I say, I think it was an odd tasting steak, but I went along with it, and I heard that story for the next 45-years, and I still hate it.
Written 6/1/2006 at the “Favorita,” café in Lima, Peru
25.
Huge Horse [1960]
[Grandpa’s House Series]
I was in the air, and when I landed, it was hard, real hard, I thought I broke my tailbone, god in heaven, I felt the pain go from someplace in my lower section, to and through my ass, and up and down my spine, my legs, I normally didn’t swear, but I did this day, and aloud, every horse in the carrel looked at me, even the Huge one that threw me off his fat towering back. But that is not how it all started or ended. It is how it was at the moment, as I stood up on my feet. Give me a…
“Gee whiz, gosh almighty,” I said, “that horse is huge, and what the hick are those tubes in him, he looks like a Frankenstein horse Donny?”
Randy looked at the other three horses in the carrel at the University of Minnesota Veterans Clinic farm, in back of the St. Paul Fair Grounds (of which I did not know it was a clinic at the time). We had jumped the fence and had ropes on us, and I was determined to ride today, and the huge horse was kind of looking at me, as if it wasn’t sure of what was happening, but was willing to let me ride him if I dared, and I dared. I was thirteen-years old: I mean, thirteen and a half; and so were the other two boys: thereabouts.
As I got closer to the huge horse, I noticed some white bandages, like patches on him, on his legs, thigh. He walked slowly, more like an ox than a horse I thought. I had never seen such a huge horse. ‘Maybe he’s under some kind of experimentation,’ I pondered. I mean he looked ok, except for those crappy patches, and that tube in his neck. Perhaps he was a prisoner, and they were forcing him to undergo those horrid experiments. Who knows, so I pondered?
I jumped up on the horse, after Donny put his hands together into the form of a step-rope (or lope), and put my foot in it and he pushed me upward, and over I slid onto this huge horse’s back, I almost split my pants, my legs were a wide v-shape now—and his back was wide, very wide; now Randy was putting the rope around the horses mouth, for a harness, and gave me the rope-end, up along his mane, and I grabbed it, and off I went around the carrel a half dozen times. I was willing to share Huge with the other boys, but they didn’t want him, he was too big, too scary, and perhaps too old. I must have ridden him for all of twenty minutes or so, when he started to tremble. I talked to him a bit, but he was getting more annoyed with me than I cared for. Then I looked into the upper part of his big eyes, they looked a bit fogy (I didn’t know exactly, nor perhaps, any better, but I suppose I should have figured it out, he was ill), and then suddenly, out of nowhere, the horse bucked, it took all his energy, everything he had, I noticed that. I was, it seemed six feet high, and he bucked again, and I flew this time, flew high off him like a pigeon being stoned and falling off a bridge. Onto the ground I landed, where I am now; as I stood up on my feet I said to Randy, Give me a hand, and he did.
I was stubborn back then, and blindly so, for I wanted to ride him again, but he fell, Huge fell, that is one leg dropped somewhat, and he lost his balance, and then regained it, as the keeper of the barn came out, saw Huge and me, and everybody, and he started to yell, “These horses are sick, get the Hell out of here…!”
We quickly ran to the fence, as the man picked up speed, and jumped over it the same way we had come in; I took my last glance at Huge, I was sorry I rode him, sorry he was ill, but I was glad I got to talk to him, and look into them big fogy eyes of his.
I think he was old, very old, and he liked me because I was young and dumb I suppose, and allowed me to have a sporting day with him. But it was too, way too much for him, and he didn’t know it at the time himself, only after we rode a while did he figure out he was not that young wild horse he used to be, I do believe he forgot that for a moment. How do I know this: well, I could be wrong, but I’m fifty-eight now, and that’s how I feel these days.
Written 5/19/06 EP Café, Lima, Peru
ÿ
End Poems
1.
Train to Newport (1962)
I was but fifteen-years old, when
Tom and I snuck into the freight yard,
To catch a train going to Chicago.
I was surprised at my stupidity—!
It stopped in Newport, Minnesota,
Seven-miles from home, and we
And we both (Tom and I) kicked stones,
Walking those dark miles back home.
Note: The author did many things when he was young,
but he never hopped a train again, it was his first and
last time. #1241 2/23/06
3.
The Missing Song
An era in me embraces my youth
It seems but an autumn’s day,
When life and love, with jealous hast,
Went fast, to grabbed it all away!
For then, no more a thoughtful breeze
it somberly moves me now—
And haunts my breast, its absentness
the living grave of remembrance.
