Baby raccoon in a Wisconsin wood pile
Nothing to do with this blog, but pretty cute, huh?
Continuing with random recollections
of my earliest days:
For most of my school years my best
friends were Arthur Carter and Stanley Livingston. Art is a retired minister now; Stan a very
successful architect. For our first five
years of formal education we went to Wellwood School, at the west end of
Beaumont. I lived at the east end, so I
took the bus to school. (Actually,
Beaumont was so small in those days that you could ride a bike from my house to
Wellwood School in about fifteen minutes.)
Arthur and Stan lived much closer, so they walked. Arthur came from a very poor family; Stan’s
folks had plenty of money. Art often
went to school barefoot; Stan was very well shod. Stan so envied Art’s barefootedness that he
would take off his own shoes and hide them in a hedge by the Episcopal Church,
where my Uncle Dunham held forth years later.
I imagine I envied Art and Stan fiercely, although I don’t really
remember.
Beaumont in those days was about 30%
Hispanic. The little Mexican kids lived,
literally, on the “wrong” side of the tracks, in what resembled a small Mexican
village. They came from big families, so
the boys invariably had older brothers or cousins who taught them how to
fight. The result was that, although the
Mexican kids were small, everybody was afraid of them. I remember as one of the grand liberating
moments of my life one morning on the playground when Ernesto Ochoa pushed me
too hard. I was twice as big as Ernesto,
and probably twice as strong. When the
teacher pulled me off Ernesto I was sitting on his chest, trying to beat his
head into mush on the concrete, using his ears as handles. That got around and I didn’t get any more
grief from the Mexican kids ever again.
Later some of them became good friends. All of our best running backs in
high school football were Mexican.
In the fifth grade I graduated to
Palm School (5th through 8th), which was literally one-half block
from my home. That meant that I came
home for lunch, which I didn’t like, and that I could play basketball every
evening and most of every week-end on the outdoor courts attached to the
school. Parenting was so much more
relaxed and comfortable then than it seems to be now; nobody worried that I
would get killed, kidnapped, or run over by a car. Sure, I was warned about crossing the highway
(I did so carefully), and ordered not to play near the train tracks (which I
did all the time. We would jump on
slow-moving freight cars and ride them to the end of town, then walk back. Pretty stupid, yeah – I know.)
There was a fifth grade teacher, Miss
Carhart, whom I absolutely abhorred. She
was something of a clothes horse, I have been told. I so wanted something bad to happen to Miss
Carhart that I told my mother she had fallen into a mud puddle. My mother spread it all over town! I was spoken-to sternly, but didn’t get into
the trouble I deserved. I often wonder
why. (I think there was a lot of secret
laughing going on.)
We had what you might call “gangs” in
our Palm School days. Not like gangs
now, of course – the most lethal weapon we ever used was a belt buckle. Anyway, I was leader of what you might call
the goody-goody gang. We protected the
innocent and helpless. I could regale
you with lurid tales of fights, but no need.
I was a pretty big kid in those days, and the legend of Ernesto Ochoa
stayed with me.
I will tell you about an incident
that helped me quite a lot later in life.
One of our teachers had some training in boxing, and he somehow got
permission to teach it to us boys. (Not
in a million years, now.) I was pretty
good at it, mainly because I had become relatively strong lifting boards and
sacks of cement for the Beaumont Hardware & Lumber Company. Palm School put on an “assembly” one day; the
whole school sat in the auditorium and watched boxing matches. For the eighth grade event I found myself
opposed in the championship bout by some guy whose name I can’t remember –James
something - who happened to be the leader of what I will call the Bad Ass
Gang. We had enormous padded boxing
gloves, so real damage was virtually impossible. Anyway, I knocked him down and won the
fight. The next year, when I entered
high school, I didn’t get hazed.
Okay, enough guy stuff. It was probably in the seventh grade that I
became aware that girls were not simply soft boys who dressed funny. There were several very interesting girls in
my class, each of whom I had gone to school with me from kindergarten on. I
particularly remember Marjory Ormsby, Patsy Dale, Mitzi Beer and Peggy
Jacobs. In the seventh grade, of course,
females suddenly become adults, whereas males continue to be annoying little children. I am sure that Mitzi, Marjory, Patsy and Peggy
regarded Art, Stan and myself as something akin to rodents. In particular, I wanted Marjory to notice me
so badly that I bugged her constantly. I
am in contact with her now and she doesn’t remember, but I do – and sometimes I
cringe.
I was, of course, socially a
nerd. Palm School put on a dance for 7th
and 8th graders, and my parents insisted that I attend. (I was in the 7th grade at the
time.) They dressed me up and shoved me
out the door. I went to the auditorium,
trying to drum up the courage to ask one of the big four (named above) to dance. Of course, they were busy – dancing with 8th
graders.. After standing around for 30
minutes feeling like a fool I went home.
My mother was very disappointed.
I believe that my father was secretly amused. I think kids that young shouldn’t be forced to
dance. However – are there any kids
emotionally that young these days?
So, what else before I get to high school? I could tell you about the wonderful summer
months we spent at “The Cabin”, near Lake City, Colorado, but this already has
been covered by a series of “essays” written by my sister, cousins and myself,
on the occasion of the first Lake City family reunion. I will include it as a separate item in this
“memoir”, which you should read after finishing this stuff
Maybe now is a good time to tell you
about family dinners. They were huge,
they were fun, and to me – the oldest of the younger generation – they could be
a real pain in the butt. In, say, 1950
there were 16 family members living in Beaumont. Shortly thereafter – as people got married
and had families – the number swelled rapidly.
The entire family got together for Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas. The most common venue was the home of The
Folks, because it was the biggest place.
For Easter we had ham, for Thanksgiving turkey, and often prime rib (or
turkey) at Christmas. The women did all
the cooking, of course. Men sat around
drinking “cocktails) (mostly bourbon) and shooting the breeze. There was one ceremonial male duty, however –
carving the roast thing, whatever it was.
The Man of the House was required to do this, while everybody else stood
around, watched, and criticized.
Charlene and Ginger, as oldest female kids, were more or less entrusted
with making sure that the littler kids didn’t get in the way. Bill and I, as the only males (in the early
days), had little to do. Bill played
around, and I sat and read something and pretended to be bored. I thought all this familial grouping was
nonsense. Now I realize that it was wonderful.
An interesting aspect of these family
dinners was – no wine. Booze before
dinner, water or coffee with. Wine was
considered Frenchified, synonymous with snooty. A family friend, an elderly Italian
gentlemen who lived further north on Palm Avenue, presented my father with a
gallon of home-made wine every year. Dad
poured it out. I don’t know, but it
probably was at least as good as Gallo.
As the years passed the parties
changed little, but the attendance grew.
Charlene married Ed, and started adding babies to the family
collection. I married Virginia, and of
course added three of my own. Susannah,
Ginger, Lynda and Bill did likewise. In
the meantime of course the original generation began to dwindle. I wish somebody had kept an accurate record
of marriages, births, and deaths, so I could calculate the maximum size ever
reached. Using conservative estimates I
think it was about 25.
And, OMG, I have forgotten another
family ceremony. My Aunt Mildred (Lynn’s
wife) was Swedish, and on Christmas Eve she always invited he whole family to a
traditional Swedish ceremonial feast.
There were some strange fishy substances as well as various kinds of
prepared meats. The most popular
attraction was something that sounded to me like “Dip in de Shmuur”, wherein
you dredged little bready objects in a fluid of some sort. It was delicious. And of course there always was a huge dish of
eggnog – and nearby, a rum bottle. Believe
it or not, I never touched that rum bottle until I was 21. (Well, maybe a little earlier, but not much.)
Okay, in the next segment I’m going
to tackle the high school years, which were far more eventful.
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