Jenny and I became friends very quickly. I was thrilled to meet someone my age. She was so pretty, with long black shinny braids and smile like I had never seen. Life it seemed had produced yet another fascinating reward for my paying attention and doing what was expected of me. I had always been told that
“Good things come to those that wait.”
We never got to spend as much time together as we would have liked. I met Jenny at a time I was without someone to share the constant and unbelievable discoveries of wonder I had previously shared mostly with my sister Eileen, only two years older than me and my self appointed guardian of the innocence of childish beliefs. Eileen had started “elementary school” and I was alone with my mom and the neighbors for much of the day. I didn’t know that I was missing anything really until Jenny showed up in my life. She was only available during certain times for reasons too complicated for me to understand I was told.
But I was assured her and her mother would visit again soon every time they would leave after our mothers would finish their visit over coffee and toast of whatever they would do when we were playing. Mostly Jennie and I would play outside in the gardens, picking flowers, looking for caterpillars, …chasing butterflies … cuddling with the Cuddles would if he would let us. “Cats I had learned had minds of their own.”
I had also heard while “cats had nine lives”, “we only lived once”. I was also learning in my Sunday school that some people could live forever! All you had to do was believe the rules and accept them without any doubt. I was beginning to learn lots of things but this was something I felt was news I should share with everyone… I wondered if Jenny had learned of this in her school. I was sure she would be excited too.
What determined when we, Jenny and I, could play together was never really clear to me. I knew her mother “worked outside the home” and that Jenny was in some sort of “school” that wasn’t a real school, for most of the day. Her father was never mentioned, or at least I can’t remember if he was around or not. Jenny and her family were not our neighbors for long, but one of our brief moments together, sharing as innocent 5 year olds permanently shaped my life.
My brothers and sisters were in school during the days so found myself with lots of time to myself between listening to my mom go about her businesses, running family affairs, and keeping our home of us four children, my dad and her without debt and the bills paid. I know that we didn’t have extra money but that no one could tell us to leave our house because they(my mom and dad) had bought it when they sold the farm in Ohio and moved to Tampa the year before I was born. They said I was the “only rebel” in the family.
I knew well of my family’s stories of earlier times.
“Before your time” I was often told when I asked about when things had happened that seemed to influence so much of what we did and were likely to do in the future. I remember thinking that “my time” would begin soon and I couldn’t wait. I was pretty sure that I would do just fine with my own decisions. I knew
“I had a lot to learn”
That I had heard enough, about me and anyone that,
“Thought they knew it all.”
So much to learn. Luckily, I was starting to learn to read and write, tools that were essential in communicating with people that ran the world outside our house.
Jenny and I were learning these things at the same time but in different ways in different houses, though just across the street there were differences that would change the way I would learn to trust the information that was presented to me from that time forward.
I figured "we were all headed to the same place" as I'd often heard my father say when he spoke of death. Death was not something my mother or the other adults would mention in much detail but in the books they were teaching us to read in Sunday school they showed that if you qualified by believing certain things anyone could live forever. Even after you died you would continue to live and even better life than you had the first time.
I was pretty happy with life as it was. I mean especially now that Jenny had come around. We were just getting to know each other and the other kids from school on Sundays were pretty cool too.
I was getting older and I was liking it! It seemed all these people were exited too. Inventions were coming out all the time that turned ordinary chores into glamorous activities and we would watch it unfold on the television every evening. Lots of the shows were singing and dancing.
I remember shows for all ages, funny stuff and stuff I didn't think was funny but I might laugh just to make the others think I did cause they did. Wasn't long till lots of what others thought was funny became troubling in ways that got me thinking that maybe there wasn't only one way to skin a cat.
Whites only signs were one of the first signs I was able to read as my trips outside the house became more familiar to me. The water fountains, the restaurants, bathrooms and beaches. There was a dark side that was not spoken about but that it was to be avoided. My father said "hogwash, were all the same on the inside" I figured he would know cause he had been a soldier when the whole world had been at war not that long ago.
There was nothing to fear for me because we had won The War. The named this war that made it safe for me not to worry World War II.
The bad guys were not allowed to have guns anymore and were far away over the ocean and our friends in countries we had helped were watching to make sure they were being good. In our country we were safe and free to do what ever we chose and we always seemed to be visiting with neighbors, family and strangers too.
My mother had a keen sense of remembrance from her home in Scotland and her being the youngest of 7 children, Sadie her sister just two years older and 5 brothers (she was the youngest like me, so she was always protected, just like I was). I knew that my family had not been in Florida very long. My sister had been born in a snow storm and I had only seen snow in books and some Christmas movies, ones with men in hats with big coats, the men all wore ties in the snow. I knew that the snow made noise when it crunched under your feet when you walked on it and if you shook, it would help keep you stuff dry before you hung it up. The movies always made a point of showing this transition of either getting dressed up or undressing. Well the showed a lot more time getting dressed in those days. And getting undressed either faded to another scene or never quite got more than a sock off.
Since my mother and my family had introduced me to these new places like the grocery store, the beach, swimming pools, it was like my backyard had blossomed into new greenery, vibrant with interesting pathways towards more complex things I would learn when I was older. Up to then that had been the case... I often wondered how things might unfold as I was given more freedom to choose as I demonstrated my understanding of the consequences off my actions... Though I thought myself capable of more than I was credited for I was still given to believe that IF I followed instructions I would emerge at a desirable position of free navigation within an orderly procession into responsible world of orderly adulthood.
Chaos came to me when I heard one spring day that was full of flowers, butterflies and Jenny B. We were outside in the garden by the mailbox, picking some flowers, chasing butterflies and what not.
Easter was approaching and I had recently started my school. I remember the helping out the ladies set up the pens, little individual domains for the little ones in our “class”. Others my age were kept busy coloring or cutting thins up and pasting them, with glitter sometimes...
So any way Jenny said her and her mom were Jewish. I am not sure how that came up. but as I processed
It wasn't long until I abandoned the notion that I should learn everything that was being taught to me.
Chaos was set in motion. Or at least I had become aware that it was a possibility believed by some to be the only single correct perspective, while others believed that there was a grand plan that they were invited to follow along with a select few…
.
In 1957 in Tampa segregation was blatantly posted on water fountains, bathrooms, restaurants and hotels. Suburbia had bled its small thinking from the northern ghettos of Irish, Italian, Polish, ghetto’s of despair and
While it was interesting ease dropping on my mother chatting with the neighbor ladies as they helped each other do gardening, or create pathways of bricks laid one by one, my mother the mason with a hand made level. When my world had extended from beyond my front door to my moms closest friends. I could just show up next door. So anyway I was learning how this big world worked. I was kind a wise to Santa Clause whether I admitted it or not but I still believed that authority over me was empowered by a wisdom of pre existing structure. One of the first games I learned to play with others was “Follow the Leader”.
The objective of the game was simple. Follow of a predetermined path like everyone else was doing, or at least was expected to. I was beginning to realize that not everyone would follow the same rules, or the same leader, when it came to sharing in the work or the play.
“There was trouble in paradise.” I had heard more and more often.
When I would ask about what the problem in paradise was I would hear the familiar refrain, “you are to young to understand.”
Not that I remember learning to walk, I really don't think I do, but I do think at the age of 4 or 5 I did have the experience of toddling and blindly trusting life would catch me. Having confidence in the integrity of my family was first nature to me. It never occurred to me that we might not have food to eat or water to drink, and as I said our home was secure. Though we didn’t have the farm anymore we had a garden, and my father was able to do anything in the world… Life was abundant and we lacked for nothing.
Life of innocence seemed a natural choice. Why would anyone want to hurt me, they all made a fuss of how I had come along and was getting bigger and was going to make a fine young man soon like my brother and cousins. I had always known that there were other ones may age and that eventually I would meet them. When we went to school. Some of them were my friends already. Well I didn't see them much; mostly on Sundays while our parents were in church we would go to Sunday school. I was all about it. It was like a art class that we could talk in and read books together We would sing songs, and wear hats, and make things for our families to put on the table while we ate, like turkeys out of pine cones and feathers, with glitter if we didn’t use too much. . They, the teachers who were friends of my moms, would give us paper and we would draw and write letters and count. The teachers would give us stars on the board if we did it the way they wanted us to. Most of the time I would get a star…
Some of the stuff we would share. We would put up it up on the board with tacks. Or sometimes tape them on the wall with our names on them. The date was important to put on also, and to write it all clearly and in the proper corner was of course expected. Some were always better but I was usually proud of mine though it was never quite what the instructions asked for. Our parents would come pick us up after we were finished and the teachers would show them our work on the wall. Well I guess maybe I would make sure they saw it. The teacher was often busy talking to someone else or about what was coming next or something. But my stuff was up and I always had fun making it. Even if it wasn’t quite what I had hoped to make when I started, once I put my name on it there was a feeling of pride.
I liked to think that maybe someday one of the pictures of pinecone turkeys would really get noticed and I would be discovered to have a talent that would always get me a star on the board.
When we started to read our first books the letters were big and black and pictures were as important and the words. In fact I had heard that a picture was worth a thousand words. This was one of the many facts I figured would be useful as I matured into the state of responsible adulthood that I could only achieve by growing older as all those around me had managed to do. They were driving cars and going to parties and living a life both with us at home and another part outside by themselves. They would report to mom what had happened to them when the got home. Well most of the time they would I think.
Barbara was older… Here friends had cars and other than they danced and rode around in their cars I don’t remember much. Sock Hops and Soda Shops. That was a big part of what they did. And Elvis. He was in the movies and on TV and lots of songs that did a beebop or boog a’lou. The girls wore their hair curly and short. Like the girls on the beach in the movies, and curly dresses kind ‘a looked just like their hair the way the bottom was all ruffly.
Barbara had lots of friends so she was not home very much and Robert was always busy too. Because he was born second he had lots of responsibility in our house. He was able to use the tools and go places by himself as long as I can remember.
Sure.
He knew what to do when things got out of hand, like bullies or how to get tickets for rides at the carnival, all kinds of stuff. Barbara wasn’t sure he knew what he was doing but he did and Dad would let him do it, most of the time. He would go off and do whatever it was and she would say she didn’t care. But it seemed like she did, but that was OK, we all had our way.
Whatever it was that they were doing, Robert was bigger so he could help dad on lots things, not just mowing the grass and raking. As long as dad watched him get a job started, Robert could do it from there. Did you know if you want to cut something with a hand saw that you should start by dragging the saw, not pushing it. Once you get it started right it is easier to keep it straight. By the time I learned that Jenny had moved away and I had decided what they were teaching in school had nothing to do with what I was learning from watching and listening to people talk. How they felt about each other and what they were afraid of was something with less structure than the books with pictures of children with dogs, cats and peaceful places.
People it seemed had learned that bad things might happen if people didn’t approve of their actions. In order to avoid the worse people had formed teams to help them enforce their interest.
The rest of my life had begun…
