Tag: life

Posted on

Summer Adventures of a 1950s Boyhood


It was the summer of my seventh year, 1957.

It was too hot to play pick-up baseball games unless my buddies and I got to the Forest Park Ball Diamonds before 8 am, and the city pool was closed because of the Polio scare; my mother kept a picture of an iron lung taped to the icebox to remind me what would happen if I disobeyed her orders. Boredom set upon us, we had too much free time on our grimy little hands, so the six of us that comprised our neighborhood coterie did what any gang of young boys would do; we went feral. It was two full months of constant butt-whoopings, loss of cartoon time, and other parental vs child warfare. My buddies and I agreed it was our best summer so far.

Mr. and Mrs. Mister, our next-door neighbors and mentors, attempted to reel us in, which worked for a short while. Mrs. Mister, a wonderful mom substitute who resembled the movie starlet Jane Mansfield, would let us sit under their backyard Mimosa tree. At the same time, she served chocolate chip cookies and Grape Kool-Aid to control our restless young spirits. Fred and Ginger, her twin white Poodles, would join us and beg for cookies. Mr. Mister, when his wife wasn’t looking, would let us have a sip or two of his ice-cold Pearl beer. We were bad assed and nation-wide.

This was the summer we declared war on our school tormenters, the older boys across the tracks known as “the hard guys.” And thanks to Mr. Mister and his military and engineering experience, we successfully implemented a detailed plan and defeated our nemesis. Sidewalk biscuits with implanted cherry bombs and a small Roman Catapult designed by Mr. Mister played a role in the defeat. Instead of feeling remorse for injuring our schoolmates, the battle made us insufferable and meaner, fueling our summer of feral behavior.

Our parents and Mrs. Mister were shocked and bewildered. Fifty or so butt-whoopings with everything from a belt, switch, and a Tupperware pan, didn’t phase me or my gang. The three girls in our neighborhood, our classmates, were all tomboys, and they said we were now “too mean” for them to associate with. Cheryl, our center fielder, the only girl we would allow to play on our team, called us “mean little shits.” Those are pretty sophisticated words from a seven-year-old gal, although we knew some of the good ones we heard from our fathers.

Skipper, or resident math wiz and duly elected gang leader, had the “Hubba-hubba’s” for Cheryl and gave her his tiny Mattel Derringer cap pistol as a sign of affection. He found it on his front porch one morning with a note from her mother that read, ” stay away from my daughter, you mean little shit.” Now we know where her scoffing comments came from. He was crushed, of course, but he was young and felt much better after he blew up Mr. Rogers’s mailbox with a cherry bomb. Firecrackers and high-powered fireworks secretly supplied by Mr. Mister played a big role in our feralivious behavior. The two neighborhood garages that caught fire were blamed on us, and Georgie, with his love of matches and lighter fluid, may have had something to do with those fires, but he wouldn’t admit to it.

My parents started taking Miltowns, an early pill similar to Xanex, and most other parents began drinking more than normal. Mr. Mister was called in to negotiate a truce, but secretly, he was on our side. He felt boys should have the right to cut loose and show their young oats, even though we didn’t have raging hormones, underarms, or pubic hair, which we anxiously awaited.

Our parents had enough of our feral behavior, and one Saturday evening, there was a hot dog party in our backyard. All my gang was there, as were their parents. Ice cream and a cake were served along with burnt wieners, and the Misters were there with Fred and Ginger. It was a downright ambush, the predecessor to the popular “intervention.” Our parents let us know that the next stop for us was “The Dope Farm,” an institution where malcontents and little hoodlums were sent to do time. We knew the stories about the place. It was out of a horror movie, and Father Flannigan wouldn’t be there to save us. It was time to clean up or be locked up doing hard labor and eating maggot-infested gruel. No more baseball, cartoons, or Mrs. Mister’s cookies and Kool-Aid. We huddled, agreed amongst ourselves, and promised our parents we would walk the righteous path of the good child. We did for the most part, but we hid our stash of cherry bombs for the next summer.

Posted on

Finding My Voice Through Tall Tales and Truths


Over the years, I’ve spotlighted the storytelling skills of my two late Uncles, Jay and Bill. They remain in good standing and are the best liars and yarn spinners I have met. Each could have been as popular as Will Rogers, but they chose the farmhouse porch as their stage, shunning the spotlight and life as a celebrity.

Around the age of nine, I was convinced that the spirit of Mark Twain had somehow entered my body, and my destiny was one he had lived. My teacher, an older woman of little patience, was convinced that I was dropped on my head during infancy, which led to my outlandish literary behavior. She couldn’t see that I was destined to be a writer of some importance. Mathematics was a mystery I loathed, but I perked up when the curriculum came around to History and English. To me, everything became a story and originated from my grandparents’ farm, my extended street-rat crazy family, or neighborhood antics, and included made-up tales of ridiculous origins. Mrs. Badger, ever the suffering teacher, labeled me an insufferable pathological liar and called my mother in for the dreaded parental meeting, which included my school’s principal, who sat with a wicked wooden paddle in his lap, poised to administer punishment. Mother handled it well until we reached home. There was no butt whooping, but she did corner me in the kitchen, put her face nose to nose with mine and in a seething saliva spewing accusation said,

“You are one of them..my loathsome, worthless brothers have ruined you: I forbid you to associate with them, ever again.” She was right, they had, and I wore that tawdry badge proudly. All those nights sitting on the farmhouse front porch listening to their beer-infused tall tales, yarns, and lies formed me. I was spoiled, but happy goods. My family lacked the foresight needed to distinguish a liar from written fiction. My Aunt Norma, a tarnished angel, is the gal who taught me to read, write, and imagine. She understood my affliction.

Posted on

The Green Legacy of Mr. Greenjeans


If you were a kid in the 1950s, then you knew who Captain Kangaroo and his sidekick Mr. Greenjeans were. Their television show was broadcast five days a week in glorious black and white and viewed by millions of kids on tiny television screens. ” Don’t sit too close to that TV, you’ll go blind.” That was the stern warning from every mother, and here we are today, all wearing glasses or blind. How did you expect us to see the Captain and Greenjeans on an 8-inch screen?

The burning question we all had was, did Mr. Greenjeans wear “green jeans?” We were kids, with no color sets, it made us crazy. Was this man green?

A few months ago, I took a shortcut through a Fort Worth neighborhood to avoid road construction and noticed a weirdly dressed man using a hand pump sprayer to paint his yard a deep shade of Kelly green. I stopped and watched him walk from the curb to the house. Long, even strokes coat the brown grass to imitate spring’s favorite color. It was then I noticed his house was green, the cars in the driveway were green, his clothes and skin were green, and a small dog sitting on the porch was also green. What the hell? The man saw me staring and motioned me over.

I parked my car and walked up to the fellow, feeling a bit foolish for interrupting the work of a stranger. I introduced myself and complimented him on his handy work. He thanked me, extended his hand to shake, and said, “names Levi, Levi Greenjeans, nice to meet you.”

” That’s an unusual name, sir. The only time I’ve heard that last name was on Captain Kangaroo, and that was seventy years ago,” I said.

The green fellow laughed and said, ” That’s the family name. Mr. Greenjeans was my pop. My sister and I grew up in a green world, so this is pretty natural for us. Dad’s been fertilizer for a good many years now, so it’s up to me to carry on the family brand.” I agreed; he looked pretty good for an old green guy.

I didn’t want to pry or be too forward, but I asked, ” Sir, what might the family brand be?”

“Call me Levi,” he said. ” You know that song ” The Jolly Green Giant? I wrote it and collect mucho royalties. That Tom Jones song about the green-green grass of home wrote that one, too. The Green Giant food brand, that’s mine; also, copyright infringement made them pay up. Home Depot has a Green Jeans color named after Dad. I get change from that, and I get a shiny penny from YouTube for the Captain Kangaroo videos.” This dude has turned green into green cash.

I am impressed and honored to be in the presence of one of the famous Greenjeans family, but now is the chance to get the answers to my childhood questions. I am afraid of coming off like a six-year-old Duffus, but I asked, ” did your dad wear green jeans and did he have a green face, and was the captain a nice man, and why did he have a big mustache, and did your dad really have a farm? There, I spat it out, and I am an idiot.

Levi chuckled and said, “Dad wore green jeans, and his face was green from stage makeup. The captain, bless his dead heart, was not too friendly. He wore a mustache because, on the first live show, a little kid threw a Coke bottle at him and split his lip; the stash hid the scar, and that’s why he disliked kids. He carried a small cattle prod under his sleeve, and if the kids got too close, he would shock them. Pretty funny stuff to see them jump. And the final answer is yes, Dad had a farm and grew veggies and raised prize-winning Llamas. Recently, my sister Denim planted forty acres of butt-kicking pot that we will sell in our “Mr. Greenjeans Apothecary Co-op in Denver.”

I thanked Levi for his kindness and started to leave when he stopped me. Extracting a green Sharpie from his pocket, he signed his name on the front of my white Eddie Bauer Polo shirt. “Hang on to that shirt, brother. It’ll be worth some cash one day.”

Posted on

Chapter 15. Johnny’s Journey From War to Healing in Hawaii


Foreword: Usually by another writer or friend. Excuse the breaking of tradition. These chapters reveal my struggle with the truths of my family. As a child and later as an adult, I saw the darkness of alcoholism and how it grips every soul within a household. I wished for families like those in a Norman Rockwell painting, gathered at the table with Grandfather carving the turkey, but life shattered that image. AA was just beginning to rise, and the word “enabler” had not yet marked the shadow of alcoholism. Bleeding in a public arena is not pretty.

The island of Hawaii held its charm, still untouched by the war. A year after the conflict with Japan, a few tourists arrived by boat, drawn to its beaches and emerald water. The men and women in uniform returned home, demobilized from the military. Johnny chose differently. He stayed, nurturing the holdings he had acquired over two years. Luck had favored him; he owned land in downtown Honolulu, not the best area, but one that would grow over the years and be worth hundreds of times what he paid. California held no interest, Texas even less. He would again be under the veil of his mother’s demands and secrets. The more time away he had, the more he saw that the extended family of her sisters and cousins was more toxic than nurturing. The arrangement with the old Korean had soured; there would be no marriage to his granddaughter, a relief to Johnny. He would take his chances to either flourish or fail in Hawaii.

Near the end of his first year after leaving the Navy, once again, the missives from home arrived almost daily. They were often the same—repetitive and sharp. Nothing had changed; Sister Aimee’s cures were lost like smoke in the wind. His father did not write, making Johnny feel like he was not there or had no strength to fight. The family had returned to Fort Worth. He now knew that something dire had transpired.

A letter from his sister Norma came with bad news. His beloved dog, Lady, had passed peacefully in her sleep at the age of eighteen. John Henry was not doing well; a depression had set upon him soon after they returned to Texas from California. His leaving a prestigious job and salary and returning to the furniture shop, working for a pittance of his former wage, caused him great stress. He would go days without speaking to anyone, lost in his sadness, reluctantly accepting the fact that he was now an older man and he had left his best life out west. PTSD was not yet diagnosed, but his behavior had all the signs of the illness. Killing another human, even in the ugliness of war, will take a piece of a man, leaving him un-whole and susceptible to the whispers of the Demons that await. John Henry had many to fight.

Johnny’s mother had become a mean, spiteful woman full of hatred for anyone other than her precious sisters in arms; they were all swimming in alcohol for the better part of each day. The reality of life was a concept they didn’t grasp; the party came first, and to hell with the rest of it.

Norma was planning to leave and join her brother in Hawaii but was reluctant to leave their father in his fragile state. Guilt washed over Johnny for not being there for his dog, Lady; she had been his faithful companion for his entire life. He was ashamed that he was more broken up over her death than the tribulations of his parents; they were adults who occupied their own prison. They could deal with it themselves. He wanted nothing to do with any part of their perils. Still, the missives came daily, now more frantic and cruel than ever. He was teetering, trying to stay positive and not give in to the dark web woven by his mother’s disease. It was impossible to fight. In anguish, he gave into her cruelty, hating himself for his weakness. Arriving in Hawaii, a boy, then becoming his own man, now again, a boy dragged across the Pacific Ocean by a three thousand-mile umbilical cord.

Chapter 16. The Weight of Goodbye: Johnny’s Regretful Return Home

Posted on

Born Without Politics


I came into this world in 1949, a mere flicker of life amidst the portal to the West, Fort Worth. The good nuns who ran the hospital, those stern guardians of order, chose an unconventional method to usher me into my first cries, with a 12-inch wooden ruler upon my fragile backside rather than the customary spank from a soft hand. From that day forward, I held a quiet disdain for nuns, a sentiment my mother echoed with an understanding heart. I emerged into stark confusion—bright lights glaring above, towering figures in black robes scuttling about. A tiny stranger in a bewildering land devoid of any plan, I only wanted to know what the hell just happened and where I was.

I was a happy kid, or so I’m told. My routine was breakfast, playing until lunch, eating a baloney sandwich, washing it down with Kool-Aid, playing some more, eating fresh-baked cookies from Mrs. Mister’s kitchen, watching afternoon cartoons, taking a bath after supper, and going lights out—pretty mundane stuff.

My family rallied behind Roosevelt in the 1930s, their hearts giddy with hope for a better tomorrow. They believed with every fiber of their being that Franklin Delano Roosevelt pulled this nation from the dark abyss of despair during the Great Depression, and perhaps he did in many ways. Pushing the buttons that led the country into World War Two with the Nazis and giving the checkered flag to spank the Japs. The Works Progress Administration sprang forth from his dream, and thousands of men and women found temporary refuge in constructing parks and carving streets in Fort Worth; each brick laid a testament to earning a paycheck. My father had a lovely singing voice, so he filled our home with a constant tempest of musical disdain aimed at Dwight Eisenhower from the first light of dawn until the sun sank low and I was fast under my covers. Eisenhower was a gentle figure, a soft old soul cradling a golf club like a weary king holding his lost crown tightly. Later in life, when I took to the sport, I learned he was a 3 handicapped and was a certified bad-ass who commanded our troops on D-Day.

I was too young to grasp the significance then, but amidst the familiar shouts and wailing, I began carving my political identity. To belong to this raucous, somewhat heathen brood, I learned to hurl adult insults at Eisenhower and shake my tiny fist in solidarity with my kin. It is a truth held dear — a family that goes full bore batshit crazy together stays together. We were a close-knit brood, vowing to all enter the mental hospital together if need be to prop up the sickest of the clan. My father was the first. Politics and his alcoholic mother got the better of his mind, and he was tied down and shocked like Ready Killowwat. He came out of the procedure a Republican, which caused his extended family to shrink back in disgust and horror. The doctors had taken a witty lunatic Democrat and turned him into a pipe-smoking, tweed-jacketed professor of Ryan Street. His demeanor hadn’t changed much, but the burn marks on his temples never faded. I viewed him as a now sophisticated Frankenfather.

Thanks to my electrically converted Pop, I eventually forgot about old Dwight. I learned to read and write and took to my Big Cheif Tablet, hoping to make a mark, or at least a permanent stain, on this planet. Politics went by the wayside, and I lost interest in gnashing, wailing, and blaming fault. I was becoming a writer thanks to my favorite aunt, Norma, who diligently taught me to read and write before entering first grade. I was a bored child prone to fidgeting while daydreaming about Mark Twain and Micky Spillane while sitting at my tiny desk. I had no interest in the little people around me, uneducated booger eating feral children with no purpose.

When John Kennedy was elected president in 1961, I began reading Life Magazine, my mother’s favorite slick-paged rag. He was a nice-looking fellow with an elegant wife. My mother and her friends went limp, noodle-wobbly-legged when discussing Mr. and Mrs. Camalot. I didn’t get it until the Cuban missile crisis came about. He was willing to risk the population of America just to give Castro and Krushev a butt-whooping and the middle finger; “here Jackie, Hold my 80-year-old Scotch and soda and watch this shit”. JFK had some big ones, as attested by Marylin Monroe. All of us school kids knew we were about to be ashes to ashes and dust to dust. Teachers stepped up the nuclear drills, and we spent the better part of each school day hiding under our desks. Why? If the bomb incinerated our school building, then our tiny desk wasn’t going to protect us. That’s when I realized teachers were as stupid as the rest of us Neanderthal knuckle-dragging children.

When the lovely gentleman with the perfect hair took a headshot in downtown Dallas, Texas, I was like most of my kin and friends. We all felt terrible and mourned for a few days, but then it was “back to the basics of life;” Luckenbach, Texas, didn’t exist then, so we made do with Fort Worth.

My cousins and I were heavily into Brother Dave Gardner, the preacher turned comic. His albums were a bulging bag of witty, logical, and borderline racist comedy. America hadn’t learned quite yet to be so easily offended. Brother Dave’s favorite targets were Lyndon Baines Johnson and James Lewis, a fictional black character from the Deep South. LBJ was perhaps the most excellent Politicasterd crook in history, and by damn, he just had to be from the great state of Texas. We agreed; the lumbering goon from the hill country was as slimy as they come.

Around 1965, I began to form my own political beliefs. I was neither a lib nor a conservative, But a white flag on a long stick, wafting in the breeze. Heavily into surfing and playing rock music on my cheap Japanese guitar, I began to listen to the Beatles. I was told that some songs held mysterious political messages. When Sargent Pepper‘s Lonely Hearts Club Band debuted, My bandmates and I recorded the album on a Reel Reel tape machine and played it backward. After that, I was sure the four lads from Liverpool had been sent by Beelzebub to corrupt our nation’s youth. That’s around the same time our drummer, Little Spector, bought into the Hindu religion and found solace in Ravi Shankar and his melodious Sitar. It seemed I was the only one in the band with enough political knowledge to hold a riveting conversation with an adult.

The 1960s found me non-committal to a political party. The long hair and playing in a band were my disguise. Most of my friends and bandmates were in the bag for the liberal side of life; I was a relic, an uncommitted poof in the wind, although I dug Robert Kennedy and was just getting into his mantra when he followed his older brother to the Spirit In the Sky. Now, there was no choice, but “Little Richard” Nixon and his “Five O’clock World” beard shadow and sweaty upper lip creeped me out.

In 1976, I took a direct hit to the head from the mast while sailing my Hobie Cat 16-foot catamaran sailboat in the Gulf of Mexico off the island of Port Aransas. I was sailing by myself, which is not recommended, and was jibing downwind, which is also a no-no, when the mast caught the wind and reversed position, knocking me off the boat. I was wearing a diaper rig attached to the main mast, and that saved my life. What I do remember after the initial shock from that experience was that, like my father and his electrical conversion, I was now a Republican and have been ever since. I wonder if there is voting in Heaven?