The neighbor in the house next door, on the opposite side of the Smiths was a widow in her mid fifties. She went by: Miss Lilly. She wasn’t from a hollow in Tennessee, but you get the descriptive gist. She was a chain- smoker and had a wrinkled hard face. She was sinewy thin, 5 foot tall if that, with straggly hair. Not even a slash of mascara decorated her face. Miss Lilly was a hard-ass and wouldn’t take crap from anyone, including me. When she looked at you, her expression, said, who the hell do you think you are?
I made the mistake of bragging that I was an escape artist. …I read a biography about The Great Houdini AND I and saw the Tony Curtis movie. I fancied myself as a younger version of the great one. Saying he could break out of any restraint, Houdini challenged the superintendent of the Boston police, that he could escape the city prison, called The Tombs. After being thoroughly searched, he was manacled in cuffs and leg irons and placed in a locked cell. Not only did Harry manage to pick the locks and escape, he did so naked. And with swift bravado, was out of the prison and down the street in ten minutes. It was a sensation.
I never tried an escape while naked; if you didn’t get out of it, you’d be exposed in more ways than one. But my brother Joe tied me up many times and I always escaped. You would have been impressed had you witnessed it.
The neighbor lady wasn’t impressed in the least and scoffed at my braggadocio. “How much you want to bet, boy! I’ll double it.”
“All I got is a couple bucks worth of coins,” I said.
This was easy money I thought as I retrieved a jar of coins from my under my bed and returned to her back porch. She sat there smiling with a long coil of rope in her lap.
“Put them pennies on the rail and get down on your belly then, right there,” she said and pointed to my feet.”
I obliged as she scurried from her perch spider-like and straddled me. I recall she had a boney ass. Within a minute I was wrapped in her tightly tied web. She had hog-tied me and left me there, squirming in the dust. I caught a glimpse of her varicose ankles below her black Capri pants as she casually scuttled inside. As I rolled and wriggled I could see her in the window watching me behind a haze of grey smoke and screen. She was laughing. I pulled and tugged at the ropes and could not budge them. Exhausted, I rested and was sweating profusely from both the exertion and the embarrassment. This lubricated my bindings and I was able to free one of the constricting loops.
Houdini could dislocate a shoulder to get out of a straight jacket. If I could only dislocate all four limbs, I could have escaped. After 20 minutes, I was defeated. I rolled over and looked up at the window red-faced and dirt caked and mouthed, “I give!” She wasn’t a lip reader apparently, so I yelped, “OK, I give up….” She feigned deafness and cupped a hand behind her ear. Sounding suddenly soprano, I tried one more time, “ I QUIT!” Miss Lilly shrugged back and shook her head with incomprehension and disappeared from view. She made me lay there another 30 minutes before she came out and untied me. I heard her shake the coin jar triumphantly as she went inside. I crept home. I could never made eye contact with that woman again.
Friday, June 24, 2011
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Canal street continued....
I was in sixth grade intermediate school at Saint Boniface. It felt like military school with a barrage of rules and regulations to deal with: White shirts- tucked in, navy blue tie and slacks, black shoes. Hair/bangs trimmed above the eyebrows and ears. It was strictly enforced. Even though it had been a number of years since my last parochial experience, I was able to assimilate into the mix. I wasn’t what you’d call a wallflower and made an effort to be a friendly wise-cracker without stepping on people’s toes. The fact that I was from California and could curse in Spanish made me interesting for a good week or so. In the schoolyard, I impressed my peers by being able to take a punch to the stomach without collapsing into a heap and my uncanny ability to walk on my hands across the yard. We listened to a smuggled in transistor radio and sang Beatles songs at the far end of the paved parking lot. That led to my trying out for the Saint Boniface All Boys Choir, where I managed to snag a spot as a soprano. I wasn’t self conscious about it and enjoyed singing. Puberty, for me at least, was some way off and I had a lovely high-pitched voice. At home, I’d crow “Ava Maria” in Latin ad nauseam near an open window like a demented castrato.
My sister Laura developed asthma in that house. The smoke of the coal ash sure didn’t help. Occasionally, she would have a full-blown asthma attack and lay helpless as a fish out of water gasping for air. Like that wasn’t miserable enough, she developed a nasty skin condition, eczema, which left her arms brittle, sore and cracked.
I awoke one morning with pink sores on my arms and legs. I asked my mom if I was getting eczema too.
“No, well maybe…” she said.
Later that week, Joe had the same sores on his legs. Joe had itched his into bloody spores. that night, itching and unable to sleep, I turned on the lights and discovered our beds were crawling with tiny bugs, bedbugs. They weren’t the only infestation in the house. We had cockroaches in the kitchen and I saw a large rat in the basement. You know, both rats and cockroaches eat bedbugs so maybe between them it would cut down on the onslaught.
If that unpleasantness wasn’t enough to endure, our next-door neighbors were a tough bullying lot who made life even more miserable. Always up for a fight they were truly poor folk and angry at the world. Mr. and Mrs. Smith were semi-functional adults and full-blown alcoholics who couldn’t take care of themselves and raised a clan of surly wild kids. I think at one time or another my younger siblings got into a fight with one of the Smiths, usually just for looking at them and pissing them off. It was the typical provocation:
“What are you looking at?”
“Nothing…”
“Who you calling nothing?”
Then, a push, a slap and kicking, followed by a wrestling match in the dirt. Sometimes we would win, sometimes not. The crying losers ran back to their respective houses. When they weren’t fighting with us, they wailed on each other. I have to inject here, that the Smiths had a daughter around my age. I’m not sure how it happened, but miraculously, Mary was not so wild or mean and she was good looking and never picked a fight with me. Though I was ready to wrestle her in a heartbeat. She is an exception to my harsh description of the Smith clan.
I recall that winter was a cold snowy one. Next to the warehouse across the tracks, Joe and I built a fort out of wood pallets. (No matter where we were, we had to build a fort!) The snow was so heavy after a particular storm that the fort could have passed for an igloo. Up the street was a bakery. A vent on the side of the building blew out a warm and delicious aroma of fresh cooked bread. Loved that smell.
It was not a good time as we waited for our ticket to ride to Philadelphia. But there were occasional times that were worth remembering. That spring I was thrilled when my mom let me get a pair of pointy-toed shiny two inch heeled black Beatles boots. Man, they were boss and felt mod and a little taller wearing them.
Although I was a Beatles fanatic, somehow I became a Monkees fan. The Monkees show debuted on TV in the fall of 1966. Remember: "Hey, hey we're the Monkees- and we don't monkey around." The show was horribly corny, and their songs, pop-corn. It was easy to digest and didn’t give you gas. Like most of the kids my age, I sang along with Davy Jones, "I’m a believer."
I was in sixth grade intermediate school at Saint Boniface. It felt like military school with a barrage of rules and regulations to deal with: White shirts- tucked in, navy blue tie and slacks, black shoes. Hair/bangs trimmed above the eyebrows and ears. It was strictly enforced. Even though it had been a number of years since my last parochial experience, I was able to assimilate into the mix. I wasn’t what you’d call a wallflower and made an effort to be a friendly wise-cracker without stepping on people’s toes. The fact that I was from California and could curse in Spanish made me interesting for a good week or so. In the schoolyard, I impressed my peers by being able to take a punch to the stomach without collapsing into a heap and my uncanny ability to walk on my hands across the yard. We listened to a smuggled in transistor radio and sang Beatles songs at the far end of the paved parking lot. That led to my trying out for the Saint Boniface All Boys Choir, where I managed to snag a spot as a soprano. I wasn’t self conscious about it and enjoyed singing. Puberty, for me at least, was some way off and I had a lovely high-pitched voice. At home, I’d crow “Ava Maria” in Latin ad nauseam near an open window like a demented castrato.
My sister Laura developed asthma in that house. The smoke of the coal ash sure didn’t help. Occasionally, she would have a full-blown asthma attack and lay helpless as a fish out of water gasping for air. Like that wasn’t miserable enough, she developed a nasty skin condition, eczema, which left her arms brittle, sore and cracked.
I awoke one morning with pink sores on my arms and legs. I asked my mom if I was getting eczema too.
“No, well maybe…” she said.
Later that week, Joe had the same sores on his legs. Joe had itched his into bloody spores. that night, itching and unable to sleep, I turned on the lights and discovered our beds were crawling with tiny bugs, bedbugs. They weren’t the only infestation in the house. We had cockroaches in the kitchen and I saw a large rat in the basement. You know, both rats and cockroaches eat bedbugs so maybe between them it would cut down on the onslaught.
If that unpleasantness wasn’t enough to endure, our next-door neighbors were a tough bullying lot who made life even more miserable. Always up for a fight they were truly poor folk and angry at the world. Mr. and Mrs. Smith were semi-functional adults and full-blown alcoholics who couldn’t take care of themselves and raised a clan of surly wild kids. I think at one time or another my younger siblings got into a fight with one of the Smiths, usually just for looking at them and pissing them off. It was the typical provocation:
“What are you looking at?”
“Nothing…”
“Who you calling nothing?”
Then, a push, a slap and kicking, followed by a wrestling match in the dirt. Sometimes we would win, sometimes not. The crying losers ran back to their respective houses. When they weren’t fighting with us, they wailed on each other. I have to inject here, that the Smiths had a daughter around my age. I’m not sure how it happened, but miraculously, Mary was not so wild or mean and she was good looking and never picked a fight with me. Though I was ready to wrestle her in a heartbeat. She is an exception to my harsh description of the Smith clan.
I recall that winter was a cold snowy one. Next to the warehouse across the tracks, Joe and I built a fort out of wood pallets. (No matter where we were, we had to build a fort!) The snow was so heavy after a particular storm that the fort could have passed for an igloo. Up the street was a bakery. A vent on the side of the building blew out a warm and delicious aroma of fresh cooked bread. Loved that smell.
It was not a good time as we waited for our ticket to ride to Philadelphia. But there were occasional times that were worth remembering. That spring I was thrilled when my mom let me get a pair of pointy-toed shiny two inch heeled black Beatles boots. Man, they were boss and felt mod and a little taller wearing them.
Although I was a Beatles fanatic, somehow I became a Monkees fan. The Monkees show debuted on TV in the fall of 1966. Remember: "Hey, hey we're the Monkees- and we don't monkey around." The show was horribly corny, and their songs, pop-corn. It was easy to digest and didn’t give you gas. Like most of the kids my age, I sang along with Davy Jones, "I’m a believer."
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Canal Street
PART TWO: WILLIAMSPORT TO WILIAMSPORT
A light rain began to fall as I quickened my pace, head down, in a useless attempt to outrun it. The wind blew hair across my face as I searched for a rubber band in my pocket to tie it back. I looked up uneasily and didn’t like what I saw. The sky was a cauldron of dark expectant clouds ready to boil over at any second. Gunshot blasts of lightening exploded behind me as I flinched, looking for cover. There was none. I turned to see a wall of rain roaring towards me like a tidal wave. I braced myself as the cold stinging rain rolled over me, pelting me relentlessly until I was soaked to the bone.
I was caught unprepared in a deluge and it was miserable. Why did it always have to be so miserable? If I kept going I would eventually get out of it.
**************
I was 11 yrs old the first time I arrived in Williamsport, PA. It was a long trip from California. We were supposed to be moving to Philadelphia, but bad-luck would detour that plan. Our Naval barracks home was still occupied and scheduled for renovation; it would not be move-in ready for six months. Why we didn’t stay in California wasn’t clear to any of us, neither was the fact that our dad was only dropping us off and had to return to San Diego. We were dumped, and I don’t use that word lightly, in what had to be the lowest class neighborhood in Williamsport, PA. The house was on Canal Street, in a shabby warehouse neighborhood. Canal Street was an unfinished dirt and gravel road that ran parallel to a railroad track that serviced the warehouse on the other side of the street. We were going to have to live in an old three story shingled shack of a house.
It was a God-awful shock compared to our beautiful home back in sunny California. Our Aunt Martha picked this place out for us. Apparently it was difficult to find a place for a sixth month stay and it was all that we could get under the circumstance. Still, I could never forgive her for that. Aunt Martha and my cousin Mary Margaret came out to visit us in California the year before. They saw how we lived, where we lived. How in hell could Martha even think about putting us in this hellhole?
The looks on our faces, when we walked into the house, were similar to someone unexpectedly finding a bloated rotten corpse in a dark room. It was disgusting. What a dump! The floors, all the floors, were covered in cheap linoleum, each room had a different multi-colored pattern you could make out where it wasn’t worn down from years of wear. The walls and ceilings were water-stained and dusty. In the center of the living room was a single light bulb that hung from the ceiling at the end of a frayed black cord. Large heating grates in the floors, one in each room, breathed hot gassy coal air into the rooms. It was stifling. The kitchen had an old stove with greasy units and a broken oven door. The cabinets were stained with dirt around the knobs, on the doors that had knobs. Below those was a chipped porcelain sink and directly below that the linoleum was worn to the floorboards. Gross!
The upstairs wasn’t any better. The bedrooms had recently installed shiny linoleum that curled up along the walls in dinghy rooms with old-fashioned roll-up window shades.
“We’ll be out of here, soon enough. It won’t be that bad,” our Mom said hesitantly in an unsuccessful bid to reassure us.
Really?
I don’t recall hearing the term, “ghetto,” at least not for a few more years, but we were quite aware we were literally living on the wrong side of the tracks.
My Dad didn’t stick around long enough to worry about it and headed back to sunny California. We unpacked, filled our dressers and arranged our rooms. Joe and I set up our beds about 4 feet apart, parallel to each other. Mom had the one bedroom with a door, Karen, being the oldest and grouchiest, got her own room. Paula, Laura and John shared the other room with barely a foot between the beds and dressers crammed in the room. The landlord stopped by the next day to show us how to light the furnace and keep it burning. A truck would pull in the back yard every week and dump a load of coal down a chute into the coal bin. Besides annoying my siblings, it was my job to help keep the coal burning.
None of us were happy to find ourselves in this kind of predicament. This unhappiness, this psychological, sociological shock would hang like a pall over us for much longer than the time we would endure there.
A light rain began to fall as I quickened my pace, head down, in a useless attempt to outrun it. The wind blew hair across my face as I searched for a rubber band in my pocket to tie it back. I looked up uneasily and didn’t like what I saw. The sky was a cauldron of dark expectant clouds ready to boil over at any second. Gunshot blasts of lightening exploded behind me as I flinched, looking for cover. There was none. I turned to see a wall of rain roaring towards me like a tidal wave. I braced myself as the cold stinging rain rolled over me, pelting me relentlessly until I was soaked to the bone.
I was caught unprepared in a deluge and it was miserable. Why did it always have to be so miserable? If I kept going I would eventually get out of it.
**************
I was 11 yrs old the first time I arrived in Williamsport, PA. It was a long trip from California. We were supposed to be moving to Philadelphia, but bad-luck would detour that plan. Our Naval barracks home was still occupied and scheduled for renovation; it would not be move-in ready for six months. Why we didn’t stay in California wasn’t clear to any of us, neither was the fact that our dad was only dropping us off and had to return to San Diego. We were dumped, and I don’t use that word lightly, in what had to be the lowest class neighborhood in Williamsport, PA. The house was on Canal Street, in a shabby warehouse neighborhood. Canal Street was an unfinished dirt and gravel road that ran parallel to a railroad track that serviced the warehouse on the other side of the street. We were going to have to live in an old three story shingled shack of a house.
It was a God-awful shock compared to our beautiful home back in sunny California. Our Aunt Martha picked this place out for us. Apparently it was difficult to find a place for a sixth month stay and it was all that we could get under the circumstance. Still, I could never forgive her for that. Aunt Martha and my cousin Mary Margaret came out to visit us in California the year before. They saw how we lived, where we lived. How in hell could Martha even think about putting us in this hellhole?
The looks on our faces, when we walked into the house, were similar to someone unexpectedly finding a bloated rotten corpse in a dark room. It was disgusting. What a dump! The floors, all the floors, were covered in cheap linoleum, each room had a different multi-colored pattern you could make out where it wasn’t worn down from years of wear. The walls and ceilings were water-stained and dusty. In the center of the living room was a single light bulb that hung from the ceiling at the end of a frayed black cord. Large heating grates in the floors, one in each room, breathed hot gassy coal air into the rooms. It was stifling. The kitchen had an old stove with greasy units and a broken oven door. The cabinets were stained with dirt around the knobs, on the doors that had knobs. Below those was a chipped porcelain sink and directly below that the linoleum was worn to the floorboards. Gross!
The upstairs wasn’t any better. The bedrooms had recently installed shiny linoleum that curled up along the walls in dinghy rooms with old-fashioned roll-up window shades.
“We’ll be out of here, soon enough. It won’t be that bad,” our Mom said hesitantly in an unsuccessful bid to reassure us.
Really?
I don’t recall hearing the term, “ghetto,” at least not for a few more years, but we were quite aware we were literally living on the wrong side of the tracks.
My Dad didn’t stick around long enough to worry about it and headed back to sunny California. We unpacked, filled our dressers and arranged our rooms. Joe and I set up our beds about 4 feet apart, parallel to each other. Mom had the one bedroom with a door, Karen, being the oldest and grouchiest, got her own room. Paula, Laura and John shared the other room with barely a foot between the beds and dressers crammed in the room. The landlord stopped by the next day to show us how to light the furnace and keep it burning. A truck would pull in the back yard every week and dump a load of coal down a chute into the coal bin. Besides annoying my siblings, it was my job to help keep the coal burning.
None of us were happy to find ourselves in this kind of predicament. This unhappiness, this psychological, sociological shock would hang like a pall over us for much longer than the time we would endure there.
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