| |
Some may say I entered the world with a different
perspective. I was born butt first, a breach baby.
During my first four years of life Grandma Kinnee
was never more than a few steps away. Mom, Dad,
and I lived in a small cottage on the family property.
Grandma lived in the big brown shingle covered house
next to the two lane paved road. Across the road
was lake Huron.
Our tiny cottage, attached to a pre-existing double
garage, sat on the front edge of a swell or running
sandy bump of hill, which, at some geologic point
in the ancient past, had defined the lower western
edge of Lake Huron. Now the lake was two hundred
feet to the east of Grandma’s house. The cottage,
referred to as the “little house”, had
been constructed as a temporary dwelling by my father
until my parents could find a proper place of their
own. I understand there were advantages and disadvantages
to almost, but not quite, living under the same
roof. Grandma and I liked the same special advantage:
living in the little house gave Grandma easy access
to her first grandchild and me unlimited contact
with her. Grandma was always eager to take me in
her arms and give me a hug, bake me cookies, tie
my shoes and give me undivided love and attention.
Of course she would love me, I was named after my
dad, who’d been named after his dad; the love
of her life. I lived in a house full of Floyds.
Grandpa Kinnee lived long enough to see my first
Christmas. He died the next day. I have no memory
of him.
I hope my crying didn’t bother him too much.
Whether or not I’d been Grandma’s focal
point during my first eight months, I certainly
was after Christmas. Mom’s belly started to
swell up before I could eat solid food. Out popped
my brother Tom two months after my first birthday.
Click off some more time and Mom’s belly grew
again and my second brother, Mike, showed up crying
and needing a diaper change. The little house was
getting crowded. We had to take turns sitting down.
Necessity dictated we move to a real house. I never
saw it coming. I didn’t know my world was
about to change. I still thought it was the best
of all possible worlds, or more exactly, this was
my world. I hadn’t noticed my mother packing
boxes. Maybe I thought that was something she did;
change diapers, cook food, wash dishes, and pack
boxes.
Early one morning, Dad put Tom, Mike, and me into
the car and dropped us off at Uncle Tom's house.
He took us into the kitchen where Uncle Tom sat
us at the table and made Dad a cup of coffee and
each of us a slice of Sunbeam bread with marmalade
smeared over butter. We kids had just started munching
when I noticed Dad out the window slipping into
the car. At first I thought he had forgotten to
bring something into the house. But when he got
in and drove off, I was startled. Dad just left
us, hadn’t even said goodbye, and drove away.
Uncle Tom was Mom’s older brother. Mom was
part of a large family, which I later learned was
more accurately called a clan. In the O’Hare
clan were my mother’s Mom, called Mum, Aunt
Mary, Aunt Margaret, Uncle Tom, Aunt Joan, Mom,
Uncle Bert, Uncle Pat, and Aunt Vicky. Most of Mom’s
family lived in town, but I don’t remember
if they ever visited us. I also don’t remember
much about visiting them. They were like strangers
to us. The only time we’d gone to Uncle Tom’s
someone put stubby clown hats, the kind with colored
balls of cotton stuck to the front and one on the
tip top, then took photographs of us. The place
smelled strange and we felt uncomfortable. So, Tom,
Mike, and I were immediately nervous. Day at Uncle
Tom's turned into night and my brothers and I worried
more and more. I imagine we were like unweaned puppies,
frightened and squirming all day. We hadn't seen
our parents or grandma all day. I don’t remember
peeing in my pants. I was a big boy. It was probably
Tom or Mike. I told my brothers that Mom was probably
getting another baby. Another baby boy, that was
the only pattern to my parents’ previous absences.
We fell asleep, huddled together on a couch. Whoever
was wet before had dried out, but still smelled
like a stinky puppy. When the telephone rang, we
jumped. Uncle Tom said he’d be there in half
an hour and then put us into his car. He told us
he was taking us home, so we followed him as quickly
as our tiny legs could move. The night was very
dark, no moon, no stars, and a little chilly. The
car backed down a gravel driveway and onto an empty
dirt road. Although I was just a little kid, I knew
he was lying when he said he was taking us home.
We weren’t going down familiar roads. I strained
my eyes, and looked for clues illuminated by each
streetlight in the black of the night. I searched
for anything familiar in the sweep of the car’s
headlights. Uncle Tom tried to distract us by turning
the radio up full blast. He tried to get us to sing
along to the song coming over the airwaves;
"Way down in the Congo land sitting in a coconut
tree,
there was a monkey and a chimp
--and Lordy how she loved him.
Every night in the pale moonlight sitting in the
coconut tree,
these love words she always said to he...
“Abbaa dabba dabba dabba dabba dabba dabba"
said the monkey to the chimp.
"Abba dabba dabba dabba dabba dabba dabba"
said the chimpee to the monk.
All night long they chattered away.
All day long they were happy and gay,
swinging and swaying in a honky-tonky way.
"Abba dabba dabba dabba dabba dabba dabba"
said the chimp, "I love but you.
Abba dabba dabba in monkey talk means "Chimp,
I love you too.
Then the ol' baboon, one night in June,
married them and very soon,
they sailed away on an abba dabba honeymoon.
Abba dabba dabba dabba dabba dabba dabba
said the monkey to the chimp....."
Under other circumstances my brothers and I loved
this song, but I could tell by the size of my brother
Tom's eyes that he was freaking out! Uncle Tom was
the only one singing along with the radio. He hollering
along with the song to drown out our cries and whimpers.
When the song finished, the disk jockey put on another
scratchy tune, but Uncle Tom switched off the station
and kept bellowing out the chorus for the remainder
of our journey.
Although my knowledge of geography was severely
limited, I knew what home looked like. I knew what
our neighborhood looked like even at night, having
gone Trick or Treating on Halloween. Uncle Tom’s
car was turning off the road and into a driveway.
The arc of the headlights revealed nothing recognizable.
This was not home. Where was he taking us? He was
turning into the driveway of a stranger's house.
We didn't know uncle Tom enough to trust him. Since
you’re an adult, you already know where this
is going. We didn’t know. Maybe he was selling
us to pirates. That’s it!! He was going to
sell us to pirates. Mom and Dad and Grandma would
be mad at Uncle Tom!!!
Sure enough, they were pirates. I could see them
lugging big boxes around this strange house. I could
see them as Uncle Tom steered us, his little victims,
toward our doom. If you had been a little kid running
on empty with massive sleep debt, you might not
have recognized your parents so quickly either.
Three shrill screamers were soon stilled by hugs.
Well, reader, you knew it was our new home before
we did. You probably suspected it was far, far away
from Grandma’s massive caring arms. Yes, more
than a mile from Grandma’s, but not much more.
At Grandma Kinnee’s we were across the street
from Lake Huron. Now we were on the same side of
the street as the water. We were living in beachfront
suburbia, called “The Forest” subdivision.
It was the kind of post war utopia that depression
children had dreamed of for their babies, heaven
on earth. It was safe, clean, new, and there was
plenty of room for good outdoor activities: barbeques
and parties. Kids parties and adult parties. “The
Forest” was Dad’s first real chance
to be out of his mother’s direct line of sight,
except for his stint with the navy in WW II. He
and mom could do the other things that grown ups
might do when Mother isn’t watching, like
having all-night parties and making extremely large
quantities of homebrew. Also, this way Dad could
go have “discussions” with Grandma whenever
he wanted, instead of having nightly “discussions”
which were quite loud and would cause my brothers
to cry.
I cried, too. I found that I could pack a grocery
bag with clothes and go stay at Grandma’s
house anytime I wanted. When we lived in the little
house I had to sleep in my own bed, but now when
I visited I could have a sleep over in a bed with
crisp, fresh linens. So, this new situation was
good for everyone, after all.
The “Forest” was a mix of maybe two
dozen summer cottages and year round houses. Across
the street was a childless couple, a retired ballerina
and her banker husband. To our west were ths Dodds
- Brian, a carpenter and Lillian, his wife. To the
east lived Pete, the State Policeman who kept a
German Shepherd, two Weimaraners, and a fox. I think
he was trying to keep the animals mean, because
they attacked him at least once a month. Foxes are
supposed to be afraid of. Each family in the small
community had open access to the beach. We shared
picnics and endless days of activities built around
the beach. One Fourth of July, dad constructed a
large wooden armature in the sand. My friend, Johnny
Limbacher, ran home and told his parents that my
dad was building a swing set on the beach. That
night every mother, father, and child came down
to the shore and watched dad use his Camel cigarette
to light his display of smuggled Canadian fireworks.
The next day he knocked down the “swing set”
and I helped while dad loaded the wood into the
back of the pick up by searching for nails and dud
firecrackers in the sand. A single one-lane paved
road formed a “U”-shaped street for
all the residents to the main highway, Lakeshore
Drive. Even as a child I found it odd that one arm
of the “U” was named Sylvan Drive, the
other Woodland Drive. Both “drives”
were crawling with kids. The subdivision to the
north was called “The Manor”. Houses
there were almost entirely uninsulated summer cottages.
Some kids did live there, but they were a little
older. When they did cross over into the Forest,
they never said anything. They walked around the
edges of property and observed from a distance.
The moms and dads in the Forest took lots of snap
shots of us kids at play. I noticed that when the
picture came back there would often be one of the
Manor kids standing attention, in the distance.
I asked dad why those kids never spoke or came near.
He called them something that sounded like “refrigerators
from the war”. I had only known one kind of
refrigerator before, and couldn’t imagine
how these silent kids could be refrigerators. The
age range of the Forest kids was fairly close, but
just wide enough for slightly more precocious children
to form the avant garde. Older boys pointed to the
contrails in the sky as evidence that space rockets
were invading earth. Wow! We ran home to warn our
parents!
Dad was out in the garage decanting a batch of
homebrew. He told me that the lines in the sky weren’t
from rocket ships, just jet planes. Then he asked
me to come into the garage and help him run the
capping press. Dad held a rubber hose with one end
in a big barrel of beer. He sucked on the hose until
beer started to come out, like pop through a straw,
except it came on coming out like water out of a
lawn hose. He filled an empty brown bottle and handed
put it down in front of me. I saw that he was bending
the hose and squeezing it to stop the beer from
flowing. He had me reach in a box and pick up a
bottle cap and place it on the beer bottle. Then
he showed me how to pull the handle down to make
the cap stay on. It was fun.
A couple days later the same older boys who told
us about rockets helped boost us through open windows
of unoccupied cottages to retrieve interesting things
the summer people “didn’t want anymore.”
Of course the summer people would have taken the
stuff if they’d really wanted it, wouldn’t
they? The older boys had shown the way. They wanted
certain things from the cottages for their own use.
We younger criminals-in-training invented our own
adventure of sailing away on the Great Lakes.
We were a small gang of four and five year old
kids without a dog paddler in the bunch. How would
we be able to sail off without trying it out first?
We couldn’t swim and our parents had warned
each of us about the lake. Each of us had the same
number one rule; NO GOING IN THE LAKE WITHOUT PERMISSION!
Taking a boat was not possible. We knew. One day
we found an unattended boat which we tried to push
into the water. The boat was too heavy to budge.
Boats were made of wood. Wood floats. The oars we
removed from the boat certainly floated away. Sticks
would float, but weren’t big enough to carry
us. My dad had some big pieces of lumber in the
garage. But I would have gotten into trouble if
I’d taken them, besides they were far from
the water’s edge. A summer cottage was right
on the beach. A window was unlocked. It was accessible
and convenient for locating and procuring any necessary
floating material.
This time we were the big kids. We boosted the
tiniest kid up to and through the open window and
heard him fall down onto the floor and start crying.
Just like the big boys did, we told him to hush
up and go open the back door. Once inside we took
our time and gathered everything we thought would
float. We made a pile inside near the door closest
to the lake. We left the heavy furniture, sofas
and tables. They were heavier that the boat on the
beach. Instead we pulled the mattress from the bed
and gathered all the wooden handled tools we could
find. A mattress, it seemed, was kind of a big flat
life preserver, except not orange colored. There
was a closet chock full of brooms and mops, all
with wood handles, a motherlode!
How many pounds of dead weight can a small cluster
of urchins drag from a house to the waters edge,
maybe fifty feet away? You might be surprised! How
on earth did we manage to puncture the mattress
so a mop could be inserted as a mast and a broom
stick rammed through the mop head as a cross beam?
Over this cross bar and mast we draped a mint green
chenille bedspread, decorated with a fluffy pink
flower. Quite the pirate sail, eh matey? I think
we used a hatchet to punch the hole in the mattress.
Because we didn’t want our parents to get
mad at us for going into the lake without permission,
we took off all our clothes before we dragged the
mattress into the water. The waves were slight,
but difficult for little kids to battle. No sooner
would we push our “raft” out when a
wave would come in and beach the “raft.”
We pushed the “raft” back out each time.
This push and pull with the waves seemed to go on
for quite a while until the mattress, mop, broom
stick, and chenille bed spread finally floated off
toward Canada.
We put our clothes back on and headed home. Our
poor parents and the parents of the other mini accomplices
must have been mortified, when people started noticing
the trail of strange possessions around the neighborhood!
I can imagine that everyone else had the same intense
lecture and spanking. Nothing was said about the
floating mattress and we never brought it up. Summer
cottages became the subject of new rule number two:
Stay out of all summer cottages.
The neighborhood was quite for a few days. None
of us little kids had known that we shouldn’t
go into empty cottages. The big boys had told us
it was all right. So, no swimming and no trespassing,
as it became known. So what were little kids supposed
to do on a summer day if we couldn’t endanger
ourselves? No one had a television to watch, they
weren’t common enough for anyone in “The
Forest” to own one. Read? I don’t think
so, we hadn’t even gone to kindergarten yet!
We did what we always did, invent our own fun.
Luckily I had just the idea! Dad had gone off to
work and mom was next door having coffee with Lillian
Dodds. When mom and dad wanted to have fun they’d
fill up a few buckets with ice, send us to bed and
invite the neighbors over.
I handed Tom an empty bucket and told him to get
all the ice out of the fridge and bring it into
the garage. I ran around Sylvan and Woodland drives
and gathered every unamused friend I could find.
The kids gathered in the garage with the bucket
of ice and a seemingly limitless supply of party
beverages, lined up in wooden pop bottle crates.
No one seemed to know what to do next. We were all
too young to know how to use a church key and too
small to get enough leverage even if we had one.
Fortunately dad was a carpenter and had shown me
how to use a hammer. I looked through his nail pouch
and came up with a great big spike. Tom held the
spike in the center of the bottle cap and I raised
the hammer with both hands. Little kids don’t
pack much punch one handed, so I tried swinging
several more times until the point of the nail pierced
the cap. We knew we had broken through the cap when
Tom was sprayed with beer. I handed the first bottle
to a kid and started on another, then another. Pretty
soon everyone was sucking away on beer through nail
holes. It was like a garage full of babies, except
this wasn’t milk and these weren’t nipples.
More kids came in and I continued handing out punctured
bottles. Then I remembered that at parties you were
supposed to have music and chatter, all there was
were sucking sounds. I went over to dad’s
work bench and turned the knob on the old radio.
It crackled on and out poured the middle of an old
familiar tune. This time Tom’s eyes weren’t
bulging out of his head as he joined everyone on
the chorus:
"Abba dabba dabba dabba dabba dabba dabba"
said the monkey to the chimp.
"Abba dabba dabba dabba daba dabba dabba"
said the chimpee to the monk....................
It must have been a pretty good party. Nothing
ended up broken, like often happened at Mom and
Dad’s parties, and everyone went home singing.
"Abba dabba dabba dabba dabba dabba dabba"
Of course that wasn’t the end of it. Mom
was crying because the whole neighborhood showed
up at our door after their children came staggering
home. Parents were asking why and how their children
were found sucking on beer bottles as they wandered
down the street. Dad was crying in the garage at
the loss of all his handcrafted brew. Tom and I
were crying in our beds after a session with “THE
BELT”!
New Rule #3: NO BEER!
Damn! No Beer? Some things must be learned the
hard way. Perhaps I should save my recollections
about language expansion and the taste of soap for
another time.
|
|
