So back we went to the Midwest with my father. Now out of the army and part-time living with his parents while working on a logging crew clear cutting some forest. The rest of his time hanging out with the music culture of the university town that we lived in. Unbeknownst to me at the time, he was also a very self involved narcissist. He wasn’t one to make sacrifices to his personal social life for his children. He would take us with him most times though as we were to poor for babysitters. I learned how to go to sleep anywhere, during anything. Late Wednesday night jazz performance? I could sleep during it. Being out behind a college bar in the car, while my father worked the sounds boards for the bands? I could sleep through it. I can honestly say, that there wasn’t a time in my life that I ever felt like I was the priority in my father’s life. And we were poor. And I’m not talking we just didn’t have enough money to take vacations. I’m talking about not having any new clothes until I was already in double digits. Almost everything was second hand and hand-me downs. There were stints of starvation. Time without heat during the winter. Times without water or electricity during the summer.
In the Blizzard of 1981, we had run out of heater oil, that our furnace ran on. And so, we had all huddle into the center of the old farmhouse we were renting that was on a dairy farm. We had 4 or 5 electric space heaters to try and heat a house that was 100yrs old, with virtually no insulation and pane windows. We nearly froze to death. This time was the only time in my entire life that my dad had a girlfriend that lived with us. And it was not a healthy relationship. One night they were fighting, and I don’t remember about what. But I do remember that at some point his girlfriend pushed my father, and he tumbled back on 4yr old me, taking us both to the ground with my dad on top of me. The fights they had at that time of my life are my first memories of being truly afraid. My father was one to always say he was a ‘pacifist’. But he had a level of rage that was terrifying as a kid. Thankfully, his relationship with that girlfriend, didn’t last long. And we also moved out of the country into the university town and my father got a job repairing copier machines. I regard this as the happiest time of my childhood prior to being 16. We lived in a house and my dad had a side hustle repairing video games and commercial washers and dryers.
Initially, when we moved into town, we started out in some college apartments. I was 5yrs old at this time and from what I remember of it. My father was actually decently engaged as a parent at this point. My sister was in kindergarten at this time, but I was not in any school or pre-school yet. We had a number of babysitters watch us during this time. Though I was constantly in trouble with them. My father worked only a couple of blocks from the apartments we lived in, and I would always end up getting sent to my room by whoever was watching us because of my my rambunctiousness and irreverent behavior. And most times I would sneak out my bedroom window and walk to my father’s work. Of course, getting myself in more trouble and freaking out the babysitter and my father. After a while, my father wouldn’t be able to get anyone to babysit us because of things like that. And he didn’t really have extra money to pay them anyway. So, we became ‘latch key’ children. I have probably over simplified this time of my life. We actually moved 7 times in that first year. Never staying anywhere with the exception of the farmhouse and the apartment for more than a couple of weeks to a month. At one point we lived in a house that had no indoor plumbing, heaps of trash laying everywhere on the outside of the house and the toilet was just a hole that dropped everything down into the crawlspace of the house. And to get water, which we had to heat up on the stove for baths, we had to go outside to the manual well pump and carry it inside with buckets.
Then, after the apartment we moved into a 2-bedroom house in-town. It had trees, and a yard of sorts. This is 1980 and to date, it is by far the best place that I had lived in. My sister and I shared a room to start out with. It was good. We had plenty of space, and that was nice. We starved sometimes. I would go wait in line at the community center at times for bread peanut butter and cheese. Before they stopped doing that kind of stuff. Which was 1983 I think. It was about 1 mile from my cousins house, and we would walk that from 6yrs old up to adulthood like it wasn’t nothing. With a bike our range is extended to a point where we could go to bordering towns. Even before I was 10. I most did not have any parenting. My dad would come home late. In time for dinner. And expect a clean home (My sister and I had to keep the house clean, or suffer strict punishment for failures to complete all of the tasks. My father would whip when he was angry. Nor did he have self control when he was angry. I was whipped so many times growing up, at one point I just felt like I didn’t even feel the whippings anymore. But I get ahead of myself. We had moved into town, and I was entered into Kindergarten. And I found out I was way behind everyone. I did not even know the alphabet. It turns out that I was near blind with my astigmatism. When we went and got my prescription glasses, it was like seeing a new world. To be able to see the definition in the leaves of a tree while a breeze blows through it. I cried the first time I saw it.
Then at school I would get whipped, because I couldn’t sit in my seat. I would finish my work and walk around the classroom talking to everybody else. And I would catch a whipping 2-3 times a week. They would pull my sister out of class to witness the whippings, and expect her to tell my dad. Which of course she wouldn’t. She did not want me to have to go through that as well when we got home. I love my sister dearly, and hope that we continue to have the healthy relationship that we have. She is one of the kindest souls on this planet. Except to her husband. She needs to be a bit sweeter to her husband! Though couldn’t we all stand to be a bit kinder to our partners in most situations?
This isn’t to say that I didn’t have enjoyable times in this span. Visiting my grandfather was a world of wonders. He was the ranger of a boy scout camp, and it was a place of peace and learning throughout the entire first half of my life. It was 400 acres of boy scout camp, with another 600+ acres of national forest butting up against it. I learned how to drive a 3-speed world war II era jeep, that had been converted into a USPS truck at the age of 8. By 9yrs old, I was driving the old International pickup truck with a 3 on the tree. Summer I was 9, I also started operating and driving the CASE frontloader/backhoe and helping my grandfather with maintenance tasks around the camp. We went around replacing water spigot plumbing so that they would backdrain properly when shut down for the winter. Set and fixed fence posts. Mowed.. we mowed some more.. Man there was a lot of mowing. General wood work, fixing tent platforms and occasionally cement work. As I grew older, the more my grandfather taught me, and let me do.
Then there were my cousins. My sister and I had a matching pair of cousins. My father’s sister had an older daughter and a younger son. Less than a year in each direction, and we were best of friends. They had it worse than us, in a lot of ways. But none of that mattered, when we were with each other. We went everywhere and did anything we could think of. We both had parents, who didn’t care what we did as long as we left them alone. The last thing we wanted at any time, was to draw the attention of our parents. So we were gone all the time doing stuff. Skateboarding, building a club house, building a tree house. Dumpster diving the college campus at semester ends to get functional stuff that we wouldn’t otherwise get. Like stereos or our bedrooms. Sometimes beds, couches. People throw all sorts of things away hat are still usable and can still benefit others. I still have no shame about it. A person has to do what they can, with what they have available to them. But the time with my cousins is what always makes me smile when I think back to those years. We were feral kids unleashed upon our community. And they were totally not ready for it. lol (more on that another time).
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