The Holiday Season (Part One)

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Daddy was hunched over in the chair under the telephone. He was wearing his normal khaki work pants. Well not actually khaki colored, but that material. They were usually navy. He looked far from powerful sitting with his head down on his chest. He had more power over his wife and two children than he would agree. He was the Foreman in a steel mill until the whiskey got the best of him. I looked at him as a five year old child thinking that something was not normal with the man I love as my daddy. The power he had was to keep us from having dry bedding or heat in the house. A real fool could tell that it was too, cold in Wayne Michigan to not have heat. In November we really needed heat. He may have not could feel how cold it was in the little house on Morley. He must have sobered up when he finally decided that he must try to light the coal oil heater that was at the back of the house; just off the kitchen.
Daddy picked up the bottle of cheap wine, there was only a few drops left. The realization that there was only a few drops gave him energy to have the energy to maybe try to light the heater. How long would he have to spend on the project of warming the house for my brother and I. Mama always had on her fur coat. The coat that she had bought while working at the Yankee version of K-mart. I hear the song "Copacabana' and that reminds me of my mama only she did not were flowers in her hair; she wore a fur of days gone by.
I was wearing a heavy coat, but my brother was in a diaper. This day the house was so cold that mama sat in the chair in her fur with me in front of her; Kenny on the other side of the chair in the floor. His nose was always running. The reason being he had on only a diaper up north in November in a house with no heat. The sight of his runny nose finally grabbed my five year old minds attention. It really annoyed me all of the sudden. I screamed, crying at Mama telling her I was going to find a bunch of clothes to put on him. This must have hit a nerve in her. She picked up the nearest object and slung it at me hitting my skinny ankle bone. The pain was great making me cry and scream more. Daddy had left a rock that he sharpened his pocket knife on the table beside her chair. This was the object that she hit me in the ankle with. I had the bruise on my ankle, but she did finally get out of her coffee drinking/smoking chair and put my baby brother some clothes on. The pain was bad, but maybe not bad enough to continue the crying that I did that day. It has always been whenever I start I just can't stop balling. My words in the tears were, nobody loves me or cares for me. This was the same thing I did the day Mama had her concussion in the garden heat. I knew she was terribly sick that day. Her eyes were rolled back in her head and she was slobbery. To me it was like she was foaming at the mouth, but that is exaggerating the truth a bit. She did fall on the carport and hit her head on the brick wall. The expert called that day was Uncle Keith. He had had so many detox fits that to Grandmother he probably knew what to do. They carried her to the bedroom at the beginning of the hall and placed her on the bed, wiped her face over and over with a rag. This did not seem to bring her around at all. Cars were something that around our place were not all that reliable. Grandmother called my great-uncle Luke to come and carry her to the hospital. He was the one armed uncle that always tried to scare the Jesus out of me. I was not allowed to visit Mama at the hospital because she was put in the 400 ward of ECM hospital. This I figured out by listening to the adults was where they put the crazy people. I do not know all that happened to her there, but she did come home with stitches in her leg. Again I gathered my information from the adults by listening to their conversations, that she had tried to get out of the bed; falling off and cutting her leg on the metal railing of the hospital bed. This story to me has always took the twist that she was trying to run away. The time she was gone and I could not see what was going on is a bad memory for me. I know in my mind it was worse that it really was. The adults at home were all to making it seem that Jean was way out there and not as normal as the rest of them. I take that as part of the reason that considering myself normal is hard for me. I have long awaited the day that I go totally insane myself. I was told on a regular basis that if I did not get a hold of myself I was going to be just like Jean. Jean was Mama.
Imagine moving into a women's house that took over everything that you are supposed to be as a mother. My brother and I went along with Grandmother. We showed Grandmother that she was the one that had rescued us from the poverty we left in Michigan. Mama did before we came here take over while Daddy was living on the streets of Detroit. She got a job, and saved the money for the bus tickets here. That was something that I never heard one of them give Mama credit for. (to be continued)

The Back Storm Door

Gunsmoke: Season Four

Ok, we did not have guns at Grandmother's house. Hunting was something that really was not done by the men there. As the grandson's reached their teen years getting a gun for Christmas was not out of the question. The gun that shot out the back storm door was either a Christmas gift of my cousins or was purchased at one of the times Uncle Keith was working and saving money. Probably the later, because he is the one that shot the gun.
Uncle Keith had great problem with us living in the house with Grandmother. His main personality was selfishness and jeolousy. He really did not appear to like anyone of us. He always wanted to fight with someone. My daddy was his favorite target to pick a fight with. He may have chose Daddy because he was really not into confrontation. Well he did not confront anyone he knew was going to rare back up on him. Uncle Keith would have times take the stand that he was sick and tired of Daddy using their mother as a meal ticket and a place for his wife and kids to live. This day he was really fed up with it. He was probably jeolous too. He and his wife and boys lived in his sister's farmhouse, so what was the difference, anyway. He had not purchased or rented his own home either. His sister's husband gave more to her brother's than anyone would to the two drunk-most-of-the-time-men.
Uncle Keith was none the better than Daddy except he did not live with his mother. He never thought about it that way. It was all about how Joe Abe took from Grandmother. Uncle Keith had been sober his usual couple of months, AA and all, but like each time he feel off the wagon once again. This day he rode the wagon to woop Daddy's ass. He came in the front door looking for a fight. The livingroom of the three bedroom little brick house was very small. There was the couch that Daddy laid on for weeks. Two end tables under the front window. On one end was the wood heater and on the other end was a chair, radio and round table. The round table top was not connected to the legs. It had a table cloth hiding the real appearance of the table. All of the pieces of furniture that were in the living room that day were flipped and knocked around during the fight. This fight was so much more than just a fist fight, the two middle aged men were rolling around like cowboys in a saloon. The fight had gotten so intense that my grandmother had rushed us to the barn to get away from it. This was not typical. We usually just went out in the yard. As we all stood in the shead that was built on the side of the barn I realized when I heard the gunshot that maybe Grandmother knew that Uncle Keith had the gun in his car. There we stood, my little brother, Mama and Grandmother in the cold addition to the barn. The shot had came out the backdoor of the kitchen. I could see that the door was open when the shot was fired. It still was hard not to think the worst. My first thought was Oh, my God, Uncle Keith has shot Daddy. I ran as fast as I could from the barn to the house. Screaming just those words. When I got to the back of the house Daddy was sitting at the kitchen table grinning and Uncle Keith was holding the door open for Daddy to shoot the gun threw. The both of them had quit fighting and were just messing around shooting the gun. They are playing around and we are hiding from them. This is something I am sure they both thought would be funny, scare two kids, Grandmother and Mama to death.