Open Writing

When I was only two weeks old, having already suffered through an electrifying fanny-whack and my first tortuous haircut (excess hair already had slightly irritated one of my ears), I apparently tended to agree with my Dad, who had concluded that we probably should follow Greeley's advice and drift west. That decision out of the way, we moved within two days from Danville, Illinois, my birthplace, to St. Louis, Missouri. As anyone even vaguely aware of history must know, 1935 was smack dab in the middle of the tedious economic recovery from times that had been very rough on the average American pocketbook. (As I understood it, the times hadn't been all that kind to the soles of shoes, either. Was it a leather thing?).

It might not have been the dust-bowl, but the nation's average citizen still knew more than he or she wanted to about dirt-low wages, the preciousness of jobs, and the ominous omnipresence of things like banks and farm foreclosures.

My dad, Adam, had been what was glowingly called a "branch manager" of the Holland Furnace Company out of Holland, Michigan. He'd been born in 1907, in a sharecropper shack adjacent to a small clinic, in New Holstein, Wisconsin, where Grandpa and Grandma were migrant workers. (The middle brother, my Uncle Christ, would be born in a tent in Alabama a little more than a year later. The third boy, Henry, would later be born in Cleveland, the first and last of the boys to have entered this world in an actual house!). This would have made Dad about twenty-eight at the time of my birth.

While I don't want to paint with a street-sweeper's brush, Dad's position was fairly typical of the times. A "branch manager" in those days was today's rough equivalent - though not nearly as well paid! -- of a glorified salesman, bookkeeper, stock clerk, and janitor. The money was indeed meager, and whatever foofy prestige might have accrued was closely akin to the American shallowness caricatured so adroitly by Sinclair Lewis at the time. Businesses like the one Dad ran were small, turn-key affairs, where the guy with the key was boss, holding sway over, say, two, maybe three, employees absolutely desperate to keep their jobs.

But, Dad's position with Holland Furnace was quite secure, as it turned out, due in part to the fact that he'd almost immediately borrowed — with written permission! —fifty dollars from the company account. Its purpose was the purchase a genuinely-needed auto. As he would tell the story in later years, "They couldn't fire me! Not with me owing all that money!" For several decades, the story would be related with Dad's sly insinuation that he actually had planned it that way. I had serious doubts about that; but then, I was only maybe three weeks old at the time of the caper, and not even walking very well yet. Nor had I altogether mastered clear, effectual thinking.

In any event, Pappy learned late one afternoon that he'd been transferred to St. Louis. My mother, who would spend years being victimized not only by the times themselves, but also by Dad's inconsideration, callous invective, and physical strength, was given overnight, literally, to pack. They would leave early the following morning for a city, mind you, that neither had ever seen. On their arrival in St. Louis with everything they owned, they would have to find an apartment before they could so much as diaper a small baby (me) under roof! Fortunately, I'm told, I was a smiler, not a screamer. Up until that time, I probably figured, things had been going fairly well in this new world. I might have been a tad tentative, but I was, they tell me, relatively agreeable with regard to new things and general matters involving adjustment. I was, however, somewhat impatient concerning promptness re: diaper sanitation!

The next year was a blur for me. At still less than a year old, I simply couldn't cope with its frantic pace; and frankly, it almost seems as if I wasn't there at all. The next thing I also didn't know, we'd been transferred again, this time to Hamilton, Ohio, where, a few months later, the stork - or dad's boss, or someone - delivered me a baby brother. It was Gordon, the same one I would have to train years later in the art of parachuting, egg-throwing, cow-riding, and dozens of other brazen disciplines (of which more later!). The next thing I really knew, we were living on Broadmoor Avenue in Pittsburgh, PA, and I was about to tackle the vagaries of kindergarten. How I got around is anyone's guess. I know I wasn't driving yet.

I was cross-eyed at the time, as the few remaining pictures of me clearly show, and wore little Skippy corrective glasses. What a guy! My social skills were being honed daily, and were helped along by a doting mother who always made the best of our rocky home life. It was a dandy day for a five-year-old, for instance, when Mom, in cahoots with my "teacher," took it upon herself to bake individual cupcakes for every single member of my "class." Plus one for the teacher. Each cupcake had been hand-decorated with red, white, and blue icing, and each "flew" a tiny paper American flag. Even my classmate* must have been thinking of me, "what a guy!" (That, of course, is mere speculation; but I was pretty sure they all at least were thinking, "This dopey, cross-eyed kid sure has a neat mom!").