Rules Change when the Ruler Changes

There was no doubt that Dad was the head of the household during my first 10 years on Eagle Street.  He was the provider, the gardener, the building maintenance worker, and the disciplinarian.  I had great respect and love for him, along with a quite a bit of fear.  There were rules I had to follow in order to avoid leather belt on bare bottom. These were the biggies:

1. Never be outside when the street lights are on.
2. Always wear pajamas, not street clothes, to bed.
3. Never drink your milk until you are done with your meal.
4. Don't bring home a detention slip from school.
5. Don't make Mom angry.
6. Don't touch the daily newspaper until Dad is done with it.
7. Don't read at the table while you are eating.

Any of those offenses could get you either yelled at or spanked with the belt, depending on how pissed off Dad already was before we kids made things worse by violating the rules. And I learned about all of these things the hard way. Before he started the discipline, he would always say, "This is gonna hurt me more than it hurts you."

In our authoritarian household, we rarely had friends over to play.  Some of the neighborhood kids told me that their parents would not allow them to go inside our house because we were weird. Relatives did not visit too much either.  I never met Dad's mother. I met Dad's sister June once for a minute.  Dad's nephew Guy and a great aunt visited once. 

Dad's nephew, Uncle Guy, visited sometime in '69 or '70.

Aunt Amy and Uncle Ed visited three times from Ephrata, Washington.

Uncle Ed, Aunt Amy, and their daughter Phyllis, with Tammy, summer of '64.

Home Baptism.  Aunt Amy was our Godmother.  I wore this dress for Lynda's wedding earlier in the year

Aunt Amy and Uncle Ed's last visit. 1971.Dad died later this year

And Mom's brother Dick stopped by for about an hour once while he was in San Diego on business.

Mom's brother Uncle Dick, with the littlest kid

 Mom and Dad never packed us up in the car and took a trip to visit anyone either.

We never went out to dinner when Dad was alive.  Dinner was always at home, usually TV dinners or Banquet Chicken pot pies.  Occasionally they would order in from Chicken a Go, and we would have fried chicken and soggy crinkle fries delivered to the house.  Maybe twice a month, Dad would drive up to Hillcrest to Pernicano's Italian Restaurant  and pick up a pepperoni pizza, and we would eat it while watching TV in the living room.

Dad also controlled the number of animals we were allowed to keep.  One parakeet.  One cat. No keeping any of her kittens.  Two dogs:  Tiny, the mutt who had seniority and couldn't be replaced, and Collette, the silver poodle whose puppies were sold for extra income.  When mom brought home a male poodle, dad allowed him to stay until he sired a litter, then he was sold along with the puppies.  Mom sometimes hid animals from Dad until she could sell them.  I remember my brother Darwin hid a baby alligator in the house for a while.

Once Dad was no longer alive, however, the control of the household shifted to Mom.  And suddenly things were different.

Mom started taking us out more. We would eat TV dinners at home and then we'd get in the car and drive up to El Cajon Blvd, which used to be a strong shopping district.  There were new car dealers, like Pearson Ford.  The jingle went like this, " See Pearson Ford they stand alone at Fairmont and El Cajon!" There were also many high end furniture stores there are the time, like Gustafsons. They served cookies and punch, so while mom perused the furniture, looking at things she never intended to purchase, her 3 young hooligans took care of the refreshments.

After we got back from the month-long trip to Aunt Amy's house in 1971, Mom settled in on a meal routine that went something like this:

Mondays:  Dinner at the First Southern Baptist church on Park Blvd.  For a super low price, like a dollar a plate and half price for kids, we got a really decent meal of a beef patty, a scoop of corn or green beans, a tossed green salad, a roll with butter, and a little slice of pie for dessert.

Tuesdays:  All you can eat pizza night at Pizza Hut.  They had 3 different types of pizza sliced up and ready, sitting under a heat lamp.  You could eat until you were stuffed.  Again, really cheap.

Wednesday: Perry Boy's Smorgy, another all-you-can eat place similar to Hometown Buffet.  The novel thing about this place was the drink station, and it was included with the meal.

Thursday:  This dinner depended on whatever coupons showed up in the paper.  If it was Arby's RB sandwich coupons, we had gross processed Roast beef sandwiches.  If it was Der Weinerschnitzel chili dog coupons, we had hot dogs.

Friday:  Pizza from Mona Lisa Pizza, down in Little Italy.

Saturday:  Since mom was usually selling stuff on weekends, we generally stayed home for the phone calls and strangers coming to buy and trade things.  So, dinner was either TV dinners, or leftover Arby sandwiches.

Sunday:  Kentucky Fried Chicken.  Full bucket. Regular, never extra Crispy, no matter how much I begged.  We would either eat it at home, or take it on a long car ride to visit one of the older brothers who was serving time in an honor camp in the Cleveland National Forest.

Most of Dad's rules ceased to exist almost immediately.

The animal collection started to grow in 1972.  Mom didn't really care what we wore to bed.  She didn't care if I read books while eating. She didn't notice when we drank our milk. She didn't care if we brought home detention slips from school. The newspaper rule was gone too.

We still had to be in the house when the street lights came on. That was the only Dad rule that remained. Mom had her own rules.  And you still did not want to make Mom angry, because the corporal punishments did not die with Dad.

Dad's Pipes

Dad loved his pipes.  He had two of them.  One was silver and one was brass.  I remember him using the brass-colored one more than the other.  They were odd-shaped pipes and I don't remember ever then or even now seeing any other pipes like his.

The brand name was Brial.  They were really easy to keep clean.  He would just pull the mouthpiece end off, pull out the old cotton balls, and replace them with clean ones.  After some searching, I found a You Tube video of a man who was showing off his grandpa's Brial pipe. But that's pretty much all there is out there about these weird little pipes.

One of Dad's great pleasures when he got home from work was to pour himself a drink, usually some awful bitter whiskey-type drink, get out his well-worn leather tobacco pouch and take a bit of cherry-scented tobacco out of it.  He would put that little pinch in the bowl of his pipe and light it with his butane lighter.  Then he would relax in his yellow La-Z-Boy in front of the TV, away from the ear-piercing noise of factory workroom floor, with his faithful dog Tiny sitting next to him. That was Dad's "Me time."

A Blessing in Disguise

Thanksgiving is all about giving thanks for all the good things you have and enjoying time with family and friends.  It is usually a warm and fuzzy time, a calm before the storm of Christmas shopping season.  When Thanksgiving comes around every year, my mind always returns to 1975.  The DVR in my brain can't help but replay the events of that weekend.  Its sort of like watching a show that comes on TV only once every year during the holidays. 1975 Thanksgiving weekend was my family's worst Thanksgiving ever, but it deserves a yearly review, because it changed the course of my life.

I have to start the story by explaining the status of my family at that time.

1. Dad died suddenly in 1971 when I was 10 and my siblings were 5.

2. Older brother, career criminal Skippy, while in prison, introduced Mom to a fellow inmate named Paris Burton Young in 1973. He was convicted of armed robbery and serving an indeterminate sentence. Of course he convinced Mom he was innocent.  She did not know anything about his past.

A news clip I recently found. From Lawton Constitution, Lawton Oklahoma, Aug 29, 1962

3. Paris Young became Mom's personal obsession.  There were daily letters,  5 minute phone calls once a week, endless care packages, and long grueling drives up north to visit him in Soledad Prison on family visit days for 2 years.

Christmas Day Soledad Prison Visit 1974

4. After much badgering from Mom, the parole board granted Paris his release on July 11, 1975 and they got married that same day at the Wedding Bell Chapel in Hillcrest.

5. She added his name to her bank account, bought him a new work truck and welding equipment, and opened up a welding shop for him on Wabash Street in North Park.

6.  Within 6 weeks, he was drinking heavily, wandering away from the shop to sit in the pubs all day, and molesting me in the morning and at night.

7.  Mom was in denial about her bad choice, and did not really care what was happening to me.

8.  Paris told me that he was going to "have" me when I turned 15 on December 17th.

9.  Mom started telling her friends that she and Paris wanted a baby, and that she might even be already pregnant and was going to name it Parissa if it was a girl (she had a hysterectomy in 1959, so pregnancy wasn't possible.)

Life on Eagle Street had become a life of constant terror for me in the fall of 1975.  The only peace I had was when I was at school, and that wasn't good either because I was flunking nearly everything and my teachers were losing patience with me.  Paris insisted on driving me to school and canceled my carpool.  Then he would feel me up during the drive to school. I would try to squirm away, but he grabbed me really hard and yanked me back to him.  I was lucky that my school was only about three miles away. He threatened to dump my beloved Poodles on the side of the road while I was at school if I didn't comply. I knew he was evil enough to do it, so I stopped fighting him.

To avoid him in the morning, I started getting up at 4 AM and sneaking out of the house in the pitch black darkness. I would walk 6 blocks up to Hillcrest to wait for the first bus of the day. My breakfast was a package of uncooked crunchy Top Ramen noodles that I would pack in my bookbag the night before. I used my lunch money to buy my bus ticket, so I did not have anything to eat for lunch, but it was worth it. Every night, after the usual drunken rampage with Mom, Paris would come to my room and assault me.  I knew it was just a matter of time before I reached 15 and he would finish his mission, which was to rape and impregnate me, so that Mom could have a new baby.

As my birthday edged ever closer, I thought about several options.  One option was to run away from home.   I was trying to decide what I would take with me. But I was torn, because I didn't want to abandon my Poodles. The feeling of dread was a constant weight on me.  The clock was ticking. My stomach hurt all the time. Knowing what was coming and knowing that Mom didn't care and was even in on it was my burden and my secret.

Paris was an Oklahoma country boy and was a skilled outdoorsman.  He and Mom attempted to reboot their relationship in October by going camping for the weekend somewhere along the Colorado River.  They returned from the trip with the Coleman cooler filled with huge catfish, but their destructive relationship had not changed. After another month of nightly brawls, screaming, and smashing plates and glassware against the walls, they decided to try the camping trip again, and this time they took us kids. Instead of doing the whole turkey thing on Thanksgiving, it was decided that we would go on a Thanksgiving weekend camping trip.

This old cooler was witness to my story

The plan was to leave on Friday, November 28th.  Mom allowed me to bring a friend, and I invited my best buddy Charlie.  He had no idea what was in store, because he didn't know my family secret.

We set out on the road the day after Thanksgiving, in our huge new blue Chevy 4-door pick up truck with magnetic A-1 Young's Welding signs on each side.  The truck bed was filled with fishing poles, two tents, sleeping bags, coolers filled with soda and hamburger patties,and a big metal grill that Paris welded himself.  Charlie, the kids and I sat in the back, and Paris drove while Mom passed him cans of Budweiser, and we all sang along when "Rhinestone Cowboy" started playing on the radio.

We drove past mountains and then on a straight flat highway for hours, past cotton fields, into the desert, and then suddenly we were on a dirt road, with no sign of civilization in sight.  No cars, no houses, no people. It was just us in the middle of nowhere. Only sand, scrub bushes, and a slow river.  Paris parked the truck and we all got out and ran around in the sand, stretching our legs.  He pitched two tents, one for himself and Mom, and one for us four kids to share.  He set up the grill with charcoal and got it fired up so Mom could make dinner.  Then we followed him when he gathered a bunch of fishing stuff and headed to the Colorado River backwater, a calm narrow channel of water that wasn't too deep but was loaded with catfish.  He set up a trot line, which is a lazy way to catch fish and probably not legal, and we all went back to camp.

We ate our hamburgers as dusk settled down on us.  The desert landscape was still and cold.  The night sky was loaded with stars.  Paris and Mom shooed us into our tent and we played with flash lights and took turns telling stupid jokes and spooky ghost stories to the little kids. Then we heard it. Over in the next tent, Mom and a drunken Paris were getting all worked up and ready to fight again.  The arguing started quietly.  Charlie asked what was going on, and not thinking they were going to go full blown crazy on our fun camping trip, I downplayed it.  But we three kids knew it was probably just starting.  And then they got louder and louder.  Suddenly, Paris was shouting just outside our tent.  Mom was yelling too.  Charlie and I peeked out the tent flap just in time to see Paris grab the heavy grill, still full of hot coals from dinner, and throw it in the back of the truck.  The hot coals flew through the black night like red fireworks.  Then he pulled a pole out of his tent, collapsing it. Our camping trip was officially over.

Mom screamed at us to get out and pack up for the trip home.  One kid started whining that we hadn't finished camping yet.  The other sibling started crying, and Charlie shook with fear, and asked me what was happening. I tried to be stoic and told him that they fight every day and it's no big deal.  Then Mom yelled at us again to get out of the tent, and we scrambled out as Paris grabbed it and pulled it down.  As Paris crazily threw everything in the bed of the truck,  Mom shouted for us to get in the truck, and we all did.  Then, when Paris turned to retrieve the fishing poles, Mom jumped in the truck and fired it up.  She turned it around and headed out, and Paris ran over and jumped onto the hood, trying to stop her.  She kept driving, swerving back and forth until he fell off.  We sped off and left him there in the middle of nowhere on the night after Thanksgiving. The kids and Charlie were terrified. I was happy.  Mom cried as she drove the 3 or 4 hours home.

We got back into San Diego around 3 AM.  My freaked out friend went home when dawn broke that morning. Paris was 200 miles away in the desert, and for the first time since August, I would be able to sleep in peace.  Mom stayed in her room crying for the whole day, and we kids just fed ourselves and didn't bother her.  Then Sunday came.  When I woke up from a peaceful night and went into the kitchen, Mom glared at me and I knew something was up.  Then she told me that she just got off the phone with Paris.  He told her he had walked to the highway, hitched a ride to Blythe.   She said he begged her for another chance and that she was going to give him that chance. She grabbed her purse and said she was going to the bus station to pick him up.  I couldn't believe it.  The monster was coming back.  Then she told me that I was not going to be able to stay with them, and that she would be finding me a new home for a while.  I was pretty glad about that part, but couldn't believe she could be so stupid.  She then left to go downtown to get him at the Greyhound bus station, and I went to pack my little suitcase.  I would be leaving home after all.

When she came back home with Paris in tow, she told me they were going to renew their vows at Presidio Park and start over, and since I was the problem, I had to go.  As Paris stood behind her,  rubbing her shoulders and smirking at me, she said I needed to pack my bag and take it to school on Monday. She said that someone else would pick me up after school.  I had no idea where I was going to go, but I didn't care, as long as I was far away from Eagle Street.

The arbor at Presidio Park, where people have had weddings for decades

Paris hung on her all day, kissing up, faking affection, and ignoring me completely. They talked about the beautiful arbor in the park where they planned to have a wedding. I prayed to just get through one more night in the house and then I would be somewhere else forever after that.  There were no drunken brawls and no breaking glass that night. He showed her much attention, and did not leave their bedroom during the entire night.  I know because I sat up all night waiting, just in case he decided to creep down the hall to my room again.

I took my little suitcase to school on Monday, December 1st.  I couldn't concentrate on classes.  I couldn't talk to my friends, who were all excitedly talking about what they did over Thanksgiving weekend. I certainly didn't want to share my weekend experience with them.  I spent my day wondering who was coming to get me.   When the last bell rang, I went out to wait on the curb for whoever.  And within 10 minutes, Mom drove up and told me to get in the car.

I refused.  She told me something was wrong and ordered me to get in the car.  I got in and asked her what happened.  She nervously said she couldn't find Paris.  I sarcastically asked if she had checked all the bars on University Avenue.  After she slapped my face, she said that she had and that he wasn't anywhere.  Then she drove to the bank.  I waited in the car while she went inside.  She soon came out hyperventilating and very upset. We sped home and Mom ran into her bedroom.  I followed her.  She pulled all the drawers out of Paris's dresser.  Every drawer was empty, his clothing gone.  On the dresser was a bank withdrawal slip, where he had written "thank you," drawn a smiley face and placed his wedding ring. During the day, he had left her to run the shop, then he emptied the bank account, packed his bags, hopped in the truck, and vanished. Mom started crying hysterically, and I just stared at her.  She tried to hug me and I brushed her off.  She asked me how I could be so unfeeling when she was hurting so bad.  I just turned around and walked away.

Three days later, we got a postcard in the mail from Paris Young, telling her where he had abandoned the pick up truck in Brawley. Since I wasn't yet old enough to drive, Mom called Skippy, the one who got us into this mess, and we all drove out to retrieve the pick-up truck.  We never heard from Paris Young again. Mom told her friends that Paris tragically died in a welding accident and that the shock caused her to miscarry their baby. The whole nightmare was never to be spoken about again in our house.

December 1st, 1975, less than 3 weeks away from my 15th birthday, was the day I got my life back.  And every Thanksgiving weekend since then, I take some time to remember the shame, the terror and the humiliation of those 4 months.  I remember the painful realization that Mom was willing to sacrifice her child in order to have what she wanted.  I remember the feeling of uncertainty, and fearing that I was going to end up pregnant, or a runaway, or in foster care.  And then I remember that in the 11th hour of my nightmare, fate stepped in and took care of everything.  The horrible Thanksgiving camping trip was truly a blessing, for it set up the end of Paris Young's control over my life on Eagle Street.  Now that's a memory worth remembering every year!

Thanksgiving on Eagle Street

Mom knew how to cook.  But by the time I came along, home cooked meals were beginning to fade away.  Even though most of our meals consisted of  fast food, TV dinners or canned Spaghetti Ohs, Thanksgiving was different.  Mom always made Thanksgiving dinner.

She would buy the frozen turkey and let it thaw in the fridge for a week.  Then the night before Thanksgiving, she would prepare the bird.  Her specialty was her stuffing.  She always used Mrs Cubbisons little dried cubes of bread.  In a huge bowl, she would throw in the cubes, chopped celery, cans of chicken broth, and the secret to big flavor- Farmer John's breakfast sausages that had been cooked in water, then pan fried and sliced into tiny pieces.  She stuffed the mix into the bird and tied its legs up.  The rest of the stuffing went in a Corningware casserole dish.

She would set the oven to a very low temperature, around 300 degrees, and put the bird and stuffing in the oven around 11 at night.  It would slowly bake all night long, and when we got up in the morning, the house smelled so good.

We usually ate around noon or 1 PM.  The menu always was:  Turkey and stuffing.  A can of Ocean Spray jellied cranberry sauce. (I was the only one who liked it) a can of Princella Yams, (I never knew you could get a yam from anywhere but a can until I grew up) a can of corn, and a can of LeSueur baby Peas, which she mixed with butter and milk and warmed in a saucepan. And we had pumpkin pie  and French vanilla ice cream for dessert.

I don't really remember much about Thanksgiving except the food.  We never had a large gathering.  I don't ever remember sitting at a table with Mom and Dad for the meal.  We never had guests.  And I don't even remember the older kids coming home for Thanksgiving dinner either.  Black Friday and all its craziness hadn't been invented yet, so there wasn't any time spent pouring over hundreds of newspaper inserts, no planning for a predawn shopping experience.  Thanksgiving was about staying home, eating, and watching TV.

Thanksgiving night was spent removing all meat from the turkey carcass.  My job was to get every piece off and put it in a big bowl.  Mom would dig her old Moulinex food processor with the taped up electrical cord out of the deepest corner of the cupboard and grind all the meat up into mince.  Then she would mix the meat with some of the leftover stuffing and form the mix into patties, dip them into raw egg, and roll them in bread crumbs.  She could get at least a couple dozen patties out of the leftover meat.  She called them Croquettes.  The croquettes would go in the freezer, and we would be eating them for dinner for the next few weeks. You would just take a few out of the freezer, fry them in oil in a skillet, and dinner was served.

In Mom's absence, some of her Thanksgiving traditions have stuck with me, while others slipped away.  Working on holidays for decades at the USPS forced me to keep things simple.  So it's usually turkey parts instead of the whole bird.  I have ditched the peas and replaced the canned yams with fresh ones. But I still make Mom's excellent stuffing, and I must have a can of Ocean Spray Cranberry jelly.  The pumpkin pie remains on the menu every year, and I usually eat way too much of it. The old meat grinder with the dangerously damaged electrical cord was tossed in the garbage after Mom passed away in 1986.  I have never made Mom's croquettes, because I psychologically need that old Moulinex in order to make the mincing authentic.  

Thanksgiving on Eagle Street was not fancy, and we kids ate alone in the kitchen.  But this day always brings back many warm and happy memories of helping Mom in the kitchen and of eating a home cooked meal instead of our usual TV dinners.  I am thankful for her efforts to give us that one special meal each year. 

 

This is the only photo of Mom showing off her Thanksgiving turkey.  It was taken in 1974, specifically to be sent to her prison pen pal.