- Jim
"What do you talk about?" I asked.
"Well," answered Mom, "We were discussing your complexion."
I never asked that question of my parents again. Mom and Dad talked about many things and voiced those topics to the ones they concerned.
Summers were hotter when I was a kid. Maybe this can be verified from old weather report from Detroit, maybe not, but it seemed that way. One time I was lying around the basement floor reading comic books with my brothers and Eileen. Mom was making something at her sewing machine. It was a really good day.
Dad worked two jobs when I was growing up. He worked at the Fire House and had his Kelly Day job. When he was home he was 100% there. Mom told us
One day I had to talk with Dad about something of burning importance. He was reading the paper and I watched and waited. Soon I tapped on the paper a few times. He lowered it and looked at me, then raised it. I waited and tapped again. By the third time around Dad put aside the paper. I don't recall what was so important and I wonder if Dad ever finished the pape?.
Mom was pretty clever. When I'd get home from school she'd ask what I learned that day. Mot only did it help me keep up with my studies, but also with socialization, recognizing conflicts, and how to think for myself. I never realized this until many years later.
Another habit my parents passed along came to us at bedtime. If we wanted to stay up later they would acquiesce and let us read for five minutes. This worked well for a number of years until we were staying up quite late reading. Mom would click the light on-and-off, then warn us we would be tired the
- Jim
A really scary thing happened one night. I awoke sometime before dawn and glanced out the window. Someone was locking in. I pretended to stumble to the bathroom, but bolted up the stairs. I woke Mom who in turn woke Dad. He went to my room and returned a few moments later. He found no intruder and had laid down in my bed to look out the window. From that vantage point he had seen the top of one of the bushes that grew by the alley gate cresting the bottom of my bedroom window. Pretty good detective work and a spooky illusion, but man was I scared.
This may be a bit jumbled but...
Out of the blue Dad brought home a slide-rule for roe. It was an excellent tool, seven scales to a side, algebraic, trigonometric, logarithmic and power series.
After a rainy-day picnic in Canada, Paul and Tom were faster putting on their shoes than me. They came running back into the cabin at Gould Lake. They were covered with bees. In the confusion. Mom corralled all of us (I think Mike was there, too) into a bedroom and started beating us. Dad, unaware of the
In July of '69 we watched Apollo XI land on the moon. I had fallen asleep but someone awakened me to see Neil Armstrong step off the LEM. An awful lot happened at Gould Lake - fiction, fact, and fantasy. Rowwing on the lake Kae told a marvelous epic of magic and adventure. I thought her to be truly a genius to fabricate such a tale - years later after reading "The Hobbit" I realized her genius was in the telling of the tale.
Two space flights after Apollo XI there was an accident. The media reports were sketchy and NASA bulletins vague. After seeing an article on the evening news Dad said, "Those guys are turning blue." I didn't quite get it at the time but later NASA confirmed Dad's appraisal.
Last year Chris and I saw the movie "Apollo XIII" along with old media bites and historical commentary. One scene in the movie calculating the final burn to get the astronauts back to Earth. The audience burst into laughter when one of the controllers finished the calculation using a slide-rule.
- Jim
Dad got bit a lot by fish when we would take bathe in lakes. (Was it the Ivory soap or Dad?) Mom's persona as "The Mad Trasher" also developed. Lord, what she would throw on a campfire! When we left a campsite it would as though humans had never been there. It was through these wanderings that we dissevered and eventually settled on Hodges Lake.
We worked hard and played a lot while living at Hodges Lake. There was digging and hauling, burning and growing. Mom "transplanted" quite 'a number of protected and wild plants; the DNR seemed to have an unofficial approval of her conservation efforts. The lake was at times a peaceful place to drown worms with Dad or see the occasional deer come down for a drink, and at others, the stage for wet and wild sailing melees when we would be rampaging pirates.
When I went off to school in Ann Arbor Dad said, "I'll help any of you get an education, but then you can
During those years of dropping out and in to school, I called Sue a lot. One time, she and I were talking and she finally asked, "Okay, babe, what's the problem?" I assured her that everything was going fine, but she responded, "Whenever you call, something is going on." Afterward I realized that I probably did only call when something bad was going on, and resolved to try to keep in touch when things were going well, too.
Once, Dad and I were talking about Life, the Universe, and Everything. He commented, "You and Chrissy have your family ... (He named all the families.) ... And Mother and I have our family."
We're all adults, competent and responsible with our own families. Yet, we are all part of one family. I'm glad I was born into this one.
Love, Jim