As the car and truck were being unloaded at our new home in Kent, NY I pulled out my hoola hoop and did a few tricks with it.  Across the road there was a young girl riding a pony in the orchard.  I imagined that she would think we were circus performers because of all the amazing things I was doing with the hoola hoop.  I don’t think she even noticed us.  Later, I found out she was a neighbor and her name was Cathy.  She was a bit of a tom-boy and a year or two younger than me.  There weren’t very many kids on our road and most of them were girls so we didn’t have too many neighborhood baseball games like we did on Post Avenue.  The houses were so far apart that walking to each one for Halloween was out of the question if a boy wanted to get a lot of candy.  A half mile down the road was a family operated dairy farm.  Just before the dairy farm was the house where Cathy lived with her parents, sister and brother – and the one with the large black snarling dog that would chase you if you were riding a bicycle to the dairy farm.

From an upstairs window we could see a thick deep blue line that was lake Ontario.  Our house was two miles from the shoreline and a drive just past the dairy farm still gives a nice view of the lake.  Once I started attending school, I learned that about a half mile north of us was a boy my age who lived on a small farm.  We became pretty close friends over the years.  He didn’t have anyone else as close as me so I guess it was by default.  His name was Chuck.  His father was a plumber or something and his mother was a teacher.  He had an older brother who was the same age as my oldest brother, Dale.  He also had a younger sister, Connie.  They were a nice hard working family.  All of our new neighbors were hard working it seemed.

The home my parents bought was sitting at an intersection of two country roads.  The road we lived on was two miles long.  The mile we didn’t live on was still a dirt road when we moved in.  To the west of us, and on that dirt road, was another house at the intersection.  Mrs. Lee lived there all alone.  She was a nice elderly lady who would invite me into her home, give me milk and cookies and talk with me for a while.  I always liked her.  I liked her even though she once advised me to stop cracking my knuckles.  According to Mrs. Lee, she had done the same thing when she was young and now her knuckles were large, swollen and painful.  I thought how good it would be to have big knuckles.  I didn’t stop cracking my knuckles, but I should have.  Mrs. Lee always had something nice to say.   She smiled a lot and was always friendly.  A good number of years later she was staying in our home as my mother cared for her during her last days on earth.  She was a nice old lady.

My parents were touring the house which was for sale by the owners.  We boys, five of us by now, were instructed to sit on the sofa and not to get off.  Of course, Kevin was an infant, so he got to travel with Mom and Dad all through the house.  Jerry would have been about five, but the most important person, the one to whom all this mattered, was me.  I wanted to see what this house looked like.  I didn’t want to stay on the sofa.

The house was much larger than the one we were living in.  This house had a living room, a dining room, a kitchen big enough to eat in, and another room that someone called a den.  It also had a second floor, something our house did not have.  On the second floor were four bedrooms.  Later I would discover the attic and the basement as well.

It seemed as though our parents were taking an awfully long time to look at this house.  I had been sitting on the sofa for a long time and now I needed to use the bathroom.  When I caught sight of Mom and Dad I made my need known and they asked the owners if it would be alright for me to use their bathroom.  The nice old couple decided it would be permissible and I was led upstairs to the bathroom.  I was happy that I got to see more of the house than my brothers did, even if it was only a little bit more.

At eight years of age you don’t understand the complexity of home buying and soon the trip to the house with the nice old people was forgotten.  But the day came when my parents announced we would be moving and I didn’t like the idea.  In fact, I was definitely against it.  I had no idea what it would be like living out in the country, but I knew I would not see my neighbors Danny, and Ricky, and Tommy if we moved.  I put up as much resistance as an eight year old can, but was unable to convince my parents to change their minds.  I vowed to one day return, buy the house we were living in, and raise my family there.  My parents pleaded with all of us not to buy that house on Post Avenue.

My father came home one day with a big truck that he had rented.  It was the biggest truck I had ever seen.  All our possessions were loaded into that truck, and all the memories of living on Post Avenue were tucked away into my eight year old mind.  The memories of neighbor kids playing softball in the yard.  Halloween, when it seemed all the kids  were walking up and down the street in costumes, joking and having a good time.  Parents stayed at home then, because it was safe for kids to travel alone in their own neighborhood.  Memories of learning how to ride a bicycle, building caves into gigantic snow drifts, chasing trains, milkmen, and feeling secure and safe.  Tomorrow would be different.  I didn’t want to leave.  I already didn’t like the place we were moving to.  I wanted to stay here.  This was my home.  This is where I belonged.

We used to have a rocking horse that was like no other I have ever seen. It may have been home made, or maybe it was just unusual.  The horse portion had a flat seat and a cut out horse head, both made out of wood and painted red with white accents.  There was a long green metal spring, like a leaf spring, connecting the horse to the base which was similar to a pedestal.  The photo shows how it looked with a young me on top of it.

We had that horse for many many years.  Recently, I asked my mother what became of it.  She doesn’t know.  Like so many things it has disappeared without any fanfare, without any record, slipping away into obscurity and leaving only a faint reminder of its presence in the memories of those who enjoyed it for a while.

My father could never afford a new car.  Once, he bought a car that wasn’t too old and looked almost new.  It was black, with a white roof.  I don’t remember exactly which model it was, but it was a General Motors car I know for sure.  My dad loved that car.  He spent a lot of time washing, waxing and making sure the car looked beautiful, and it did.

One day, on the way home from work, as he approached an intersection, another car on the opposite road failed to stop at their stop sign.  It was being driven by a young girl who may have not been familiar with the road and wasn’t aware of the stop sign.  The collision threw my father out of the car and he landed in someone’s yard.  This was long before seat belts were a common feature in cars.  The beautiful black and white car that my father loved so much was destroyed.  The girls in the other car were not seriously injured.  My father spent a few days in the hospital.  How many I don’t know, but I do remember going to visit him.  In the 1950′s kids weren’t usually allowed as visitors in a hospital so we had to stay in the parking lot as my father waved from his window, several stories into the air.

After that, my father never showered too much attention on a car.  He said he thought it was because he had let the car become too important in his life that perhaps, God took it away from him.  I know God doesn’t like us to worship anything other than Him, so my father’s reasoning does have some credibility in my mind.  When I got old enough to have my own cars I made sure I didn’t wash or wax them any more than was absolutely necessary.  Laziness may have had something more to do with that than my father’s idea about why his car was destroyed, because even though I never idolized any car that I’ve owned, I did have one totally destroyed.  But that’s a story for later.

One sunny afternoon my brother Randy came in from the backyard with something special in his hands.  It was a tiny baby rabbit.  Probably only a few weeks old.  Everyone was excited as he told how he had found it.  The bunny was put in a box and we put grass and other things we thought baby bunnies would like to eat inside the box as well.  It would be a challenge to raise a wild bunny, but the rewards of watching it grow into adulthood, and owning a tamed wild rabbit would be worth the effort.

The next morning brought reality to our house.  The bunny was dead.  Wild animals rarely do well in captivity.  Especially if they’re in the hands of those too young to know proper handling and feeding needs of whatever animal they might have captured.  We were disappointed, probably Randy was most of all, but we weren’t shattered and the bunny incident was soon added to the list of things that happen when you’re growing up.

Danny, from next door, was one of my best friends.  Proximity and age similarity almost assured that it would be so.  We had tons of great times together, and got along very well – most of the time.

I don’t know what our disagreement was about, I don’t know who started it, and I don’t know who was right and who was wrong.  I just know I ended up being the loser of this argument.  The fight started and ended in our yard, near the street.  We were quite angry at each other.  At least I remember I was quite angry.  One of us, and I really don’t remember which one, picked up a rock and threw it at the other.  It missed its target.

Then the other picked up the same rock and threw it back at the first offender.  It missed again.  This happened several times.  I guess we were not as accurate as we were angry.  It seemed like a rather large rock to me.  I remember needing two hands to pick it up and toss it, but never far enough to do any damage.  For some reason which I don’t fully understand, maybe I thought the argument was over, maybe I was so blind with anger I wasn’t thinking straight – I don’t know.  For some reason, I sat down at the top of the ditch by the street.  Danny picked up the stone, but instead of throwing it, brought it over to where I was sitting and dropped it on my head.  I’m guessing it hurt quite a bit.

I believe it must have been my anguished cry that brought to my parents attention the news that I had been injured.  Or maybe it was the blood dripping from a gash in my skull, I’m really not sure.  After tending to my wounds my father called Danny’s parents over to our house and had a loud discussion with them.  Being a young boy, nothing of what my father said registered with me, but I could tell he was not happy.

While he was shouting at Danny’s parents I saw something I had never seen before.  My father was crying.  Whether it was his anger or his concern for me I don’t know, but I do know he was definitely crying.  Danny’s parents were finally reprimanded fully and allowed to go back to their house.  I wasn’t sure what to think of what I had witnessed.  My head hurt a little.

The next day, Danny and I played together like the good friends we were.

Behind their house a winding creek found its way through trees and over rocks.  This was a favorite swimming spot for neighborhood kids and many times there would be a dozen or more boys and girls splashing around in the creek while a few cautious mothers watched to see that no one drowned or got hurt.

One of the frightening things about this place for a seven year old boy was the blood suckers.  Occasionally, someone would get a few on their feet or legs and before all their blood got sucked out, a mother or friend would have to pull them off.  Whether they were really blood suckers or just some snails didn’t matter.  The thought that they were draining your blood while you splashed in the creek, made the creek a dangerous place.

If we walked along the creek a few hundred feet to the west, it became very shallow, about ankle deep.  We would sometimes spend a little time catching “crabs” (crayfish) and trying not to get caught in their pincers.   The little ones were easiest to catch and the big two inch “crabs” were fiesty and challenging.  I’m not sure what we did with them after we caught them.  Maybe we pulled their pincers off – probably not.  Or maybe we gave them to someone who would use them as bait when they went fishing.  Possibly.  I think we probably played with them for a while and set them free most of the time.

One summer there was a tremendous amount of excitement at our neighbor’s house.  Someone had found a very large snapping turtle and the older neighborhood boys were trying to get it into a barrel.  Eventually, they were successful and we all took turns looking at what was the biggest turtle I had ever seen.  He wasn’t happy about being in the barrel and would bite anything that got within reach of his sharp mouth.  When I went back a day or two later to look at the turtle again, I learned he had been made into soup.

Another pasttime we enjoyed was catching snakes.  As a neighborhood full of boys it didn’t take us long to acquire a large quantity of snakes.  They were kept in boxes at a house across the street from ours, and ranges in size from not much bigger than a worm, to scary big.  One snake in particular was found in the tall weeds one day and several of us were put in charge of holding a burlap bag open while my brother, Randy, attempted to put a large black snake into it.  The snake appeared to be as big around as my forearm, and every time Randy tried to insert it into the burlap bag, it would raise its head and look at one of us holding the bag, which naturally caused that person to let go of the bag and run a few steps away to avoid being bitten by the snake.  After several unsuccessful tries we finally managed to get the snake in the bag and added it to the others.

It seems like it was only a few days later that we moved away from that neighborhood, so I don’t know whatever became of all those snakes.

The groups would have lessons from the Bible, but would also work on badges and then have a recreation and snack time.  Once, the group came to our house for some recreational activities.  There were about 20 or so boys and girls playing in our yard and having a really good time.

I was too young to be an official part of the group, but since my parents were leading it, and it was held at our house, I was allowed a little participation.  I decided to lead the kids in a game of “Follow the Leader”.  The rules are simple enough, follow the leader.  Wherever I would go, they would go.

I led them around the yard and into some tall grass, down a path that had been walked many times before by the looks of it.  Twenty boys and girls following single file, chattering and laughing, everyone having a good time following the little boy at the head of the line.

Then for some reason they started running and breaking rank.  Boys and girls waving their hands wildly and screaming and crying.  I wasn’t quite sure what to make of all the commotion.  Most of them headed for our house and ran inside.  I followed, hoping to find out what was going on.

Inside our living room were boys in their underwear and adults looking them over very carefully.  It was all very exciting, yet curious to see nearly naked kids in our house.  Kids that went to our church and normally wouldn’t be seen in such a state of undress.

Finally I learned what had happened.  As I led the kids through the tall grass, someone (perhaps me) stirred up a bee’s nest that was in or on the ground and most of the kids got stung.  I didn’t even see a bee, so I felt fortunate because by the way the kids were behaving, bee stings seemed to be not too much fun and maybe a little painful.

Several years later I found out how traumatic a first bee sting can be.  I was playing outside with my good friend and neighbor, Danny.  I had one of those toys where you pull on something and a little helicopter propeller looking piece of plastic flies into the air.  Danny and I were chasing one of these as it came to the ground.  I ran faster and got to it first.  I was so proud that I beat Danny to the toy.  I couldn’t wait to send it into the air again.

As I reached down to pick up the little propeller I felt sharp, hot, fire go through one of my fingers.  I cried out in pain and dropped the propeller.  My father scooped me up, looked at my finger and rushed me into the kitchen, putting my hand under cold water.  I looked at my finger and cried even louder because it looked like the inside of my finger was exposed.  My father explained that I had been stung by a honey bee and what I was seeing was the part of the bee and stinger that were in my finger.  Somehow I don’t think that made me feel much better.  That’s when I learned that honey bees die if they sting someone.  At least I had that to comfort me.

Behind our house was a large, long cluster of trees.  On the other side of the trees were railroad tracks.  Whenever a train would go by we would stop whatever we were doing and run towards the tracks to get a close up look as the train passed by.  It was a challenge to try to count how many cars the train was pulling or to make it to the tracks in time to see the engineer and have him blow the whistle just for you.  For me, there were never enough trains and I could never run fast enough to get close as they rumbled along.

The trees in front of the tracks were a mixture of all kinds of trees, but there was at least one tree that was special.  Every year it would grow nice big juicy yellow apples.  I loved those apples.  We would pick as many as we could carry and eat them on the way back to the house.  I’ve had yellow apples since then, but they never tasted as good as the ones that grew by the railroad tracks.

Sometimes we would follow the tracks a few hundred feet west where we would come upon a mysterious building.  The building was unpainted and appeared to be unoccupied, at least to a young boy’s eyes.  It wasn’t very big and there never seemed to be anyone in it, yet there was evidence that people had been there.  Peeking in the windows didn’t give us much information about who might have owned the building or frequented it.  Outside of the building were some large metal barrels.  Oil drums filled with thermometers, some broken, some damaged.  We surmised that thermometers were manufactured inside this building and the defective ones were tossed into the oil drums for disposal later.

Being boys, my brothers and I took some of the thermometers, broke them and retrieved the mercury.  Sometimes, we’d put it in a jar and watch it spin and split and come back together again.  It was also fun to watch it wiggle in our hands or on a table.  Of course we didn’t know then how dangerous this could be.  Whatever the risk may have been, it doesn’t seem to have affected any of us.

Time trudges forward, sometimes so slowly we don’t notice the changes until we’ve been away and then return.  Now, the railroad tracks are gone and an overgrown pathway of weeds consume the space they once took.  The apple trees have long since died and been removed.  The mysterious building with thermometers spilling out everywhere has been replaced by a larger building of some sort.  No little boys run to the sound of a passing train, no apples wait for those willing to climb the tree and pick them, and no one living there today is even aware of what they are missing. Like so many other things of youth, the trains, apples, and mysterious buildings are gone now, and only memories remain.

“You Bet Your Life” with Groucho Marx was a family favorite.  Nobody was funnier than Groucho.  Even as a little kid I knew Groucho was a funny man.  For some reason, Groucho reminded me of our family doctor, who also had a mustache and glasses.  I guess that was enough to make them seem like they were related.  I never confused the two men, its just that they reminded me of each other.  On Groucho’s show, contestants were teamed together with strangers and played for prizes up to a couple hundred dollars.  We would always wait with anticipation to see if anyone would say the secret word that would make the weird looking bird drop from the rafters and give the contestants some extra cash.

Art Linkletter’s “House Party” was fun to watch.  The show was geared towards women I believe, but the best part for me was when he would interview the kids from the audience.  He would have about six kids sitting on chairs and one by one ask them their names, what school they attended, what was their favorite color, what did their parents tell them not to say…. He was slick.  Sooner or later one of the kids would say something that would make the audience roar with laughter and we at home would laugh as well.  I especially liked the big long microphone he used when he talked to people.

Another favorite was “Queen For A Day”, a title that may take on a completely different meaning today than what was intended by the original.  On “Queen For A Day” the host would call down women from the audience, they would tell a sad story about their life situation and whoever had the saddest story would become “Queen For A Day” and win washers and dryers, or refrigerators, or whatever the show’s producers thought she should win.  She’d get a robe and a crown and everyone was crying and that was the show.

All of these shows had something in common that my five or six year old brain caught onto right away.   On every show the host would ask a contestant their name and put this object in front of them while they answered.  Then they would return the object to their face and ask another question, and send the object back in the face of the contestant.  I noticed this and was fascinated that this long object could make people tell you all kinds of things.

One day, I was outside behind the house and noticed this old, old washing machine sitting there.  It was round, had two large rubber cylinders resting horizontally on the top of it, and on one side was a long handle.  This is pretty much what it looked like: http://www.jamd.com/image/g/3239465.  Somehow, I managed to get the handle off (the washer didn’t work anyway) and my career as a TV game show host began.

Anyone who got close enough to me became a contestant, and I would very deftly do what all hosts did – ask them their name.  Then with every bit of professionalism I could muster I would thrust the “namer” in front of them so they could respond.  That’s right, the namer.  All TV hosts had a namer that would make people tell them their names.  Now I had one and no one could refuse.  To my surprise, most people didn’t really want to be a contestant on my imaginary game show, so my career as a host was rather abruptly ended and the washing machine handle eventually found its way into the trash.  Years later I learned that namers were called microphones and I started wondering who Mike was.

I was standing out near the edge of the road one day watching the cars go down our neighborhood street.  For some reason I can’t explain, and don’t understand, I decided it would be a good thing to pick up the little stones, the little gravel pea sized stones, and thrust them at passing cars.  So I did.  The sound of pebbles against some innocent driver’s paint job was kind of pleasing.  That is, until the car stopped and the driver got out.  The man was not happy, but I was just a little child and certainly meant no harm.  I just liked the sound of pebbles on metal.  I don’t remember what he said to me, or if he told my parents, or exactly what transpired.  I do know that I never did do that again.

When I was growing up there was a popular sing song poem that our parents taught us as a way to ignore negative things people might say about us.  I guess its purpose was to teach us to let insults roll off our backs and to continue living in a positive state of mind.  Maybe you’ve heard it, “Sticks and stone can break my bones, but names will never hurt me.”  The idea that name calling could never be anywhere near as harmful as a physical attack was clear and learned easily.  It was a favorite response when an older brother, or neighbor might try to belittle a little fellow.  A way to keep one’s self image intact.  Say the poem and your verbal attacker was instantly disarmed.

The problem with the poem, and what it was supposed to do, was that not everyone believed it.  Some people took hurtful words to heart and scars that could last a lifetime were formed.

One summer day a young boy, about twelve years old, came to our house.  He was visiting everyone’s house asking for whatever the occupants could spare.  A few dollars or coins, shoes, shirts, anything.  He was obviously very poor, and he wasn’t from our neighborhood.  I had never seen him before.  As he was leaving our driveway, an older neighbor boy whispered something in my ear and told me to say it loud.  It was one word.  I had never heard the word before.  My older brothers had never said it, my parents had never said it, and I had no idea what the word meant.  So with youthful abandon I shouted out “Nigger!” loud and clear.  The young boy who was at that time only a dozen feet away from me stopped, turned, and looked at me.   I knew instantly that I had said something horrible, something I never should have said.  I didn’t know why it offended the young boy, but I knew it did, and I was instantly terrified that he was going to hurt me, or worse, tell my parents.  He didn’t do either.  After staring at me only a moment, he turned and was on his way.

I had said that word in innocence, but after seeing his reaction I knew it was a hurtful thing to say.  I’m sure the young boy to whom I said it carries the scars of that and perhaps many other painful words that were spoken throughout his life.  Like so many things we do wrong, we can’t change the fact that we did them, but we can certainly prevent ourselves from ever doing so again.  We can only hope those we’ve hurt can forgive us.

Dale teaching me about pirates

To this day, I’m not sure what my mother’s hosiery and high heels had to do with being a pirate, but I guess at the time it seemed essential.  Just for the record, we are both happily married to women and no longer dress as pirates.

Sometimes the bunk beds served as a stage for hand puppet or even string puppet shows.  We had hand puppets of some of the characters from the Howdy Doody show.  Mayor Phineas T. Bluster was one and Flub a Dub was another.  I don’t think the stringed puppets were characters on any TV show, I think they may have been a project or craft of one of my older brothers.  We also made hand puppets out of Play-Doh and cloth, as well as sock puppets made from socks with buttons for eyes.  My mother would help us with these.  It was always fun and challenging to make a puppet head out of Play-Doh and then dry it and attach it to some cloth for a body.  The puppet heads were always very heavy for their size but we didn’t care, we made them and we were having fun.

The room Dale and Randy shared was large enough for the bunk bed, a dresser or two and nothing else.  The house we lived in was a very small two bedroom home, probably no more than 900 square feet, if that.  With five growing boys it was getting smaller all the time.  However, during these years when we played pirates, or cowboys, (then the bunk bed would become a stagecoach) I was between five and eight years old, making Jerry’s age between two and five, and Kevin was another three years younger than Jerry, I think.  We were still small so we still fit in that little house.

The bedroom I slept in should have belonged to my parents, but instead Jerry and I, and then later, Kevin, all slept in that room in what seemed to be a large bed.  Our room was okay for Lincoln Logs and games like that, but without a bunk bed it seemed a little less interesting.  We did have a mysterious closet that held secret things as well as toys and clothes.  The secret thing was a panel that could be removed to access either plumbing or electric, I’m not sure which.

As I said before, my parents slept on a roll out in the living room.  I think they used the closet in my room for their clothes.  Can you imagine folding up your bed every day and unfolding it every night, for several years?  I wouldn’t want to do it.  I suppose it wasn’t their idea of a good time either.