The Photo Purge

When Dad died in 1971, Mom went a bit off the deep end.  After an aborted attempt to put us all out of our misery, then taking us out of school for the month of October for a visit to Ephrata, Washington, our lives continued on a weird path.

In 1972, there was a huge rift that occurred in the family. I was only 11 years old, and the little kids were six, so we had no awareness of the adult complexities behind it.  But the drama, for me, began when Mom suddenly started digging in the closet and under her bed, searching for every photo and negative of her kids.  She was ranting and raving while she retrieved every box and photo album and carried them to the living room. After spending a few hours locating every photo she could find, she went to her desk and got the scissors.

I sat there with her while she opened each box, searched through the photos and negatives, and isolated every single one that had an image of Tim.  As she cursed, yelled, and cried, she took the scissors and cut his face out of each print.  It took her hours, but she finally had hundreds of photos cut up, with baby Tim, toddler Tim, schoolboy Tim, teen Tim, and adult Tim in a little pile on the floor.  Then she went to the fireplace, crumpled some newspapers and tossed them in, and lit a match.  As she threw his photos in the fire, she continued to curse him, screaming that she wanted to forget he ever was born, that she regretted having him, that she never wanted to talk to him again.

Mom even changed the captions on the negative holders, writing a 4 over the 5, and crossing out Tim's name.

I knew she had been mad at him when Dad died because right after the funeral, he went to Dad's garage and trashed it, but that happened months before.  When I asked her what happened to make her so mad at him this time, she told me that Tim was trying to take us three kids away from her.
She then asked me if I remembered Mopsy.  Mopsy was my beloved pure white Angora kitten that I had when I was 4 years old.  Mopsy just disappeared one day and I never knew what happened to her.  When I told Mom I remembered her, and she had run away from home, Mom corrected me.  "No," she said.  "I gave her to Tim, and he beat her and threw her against the wall and killed her."
I have no idea if this was true or a lie.  But it was a good way to get a little girl to immediately hate and fear Tim.

Me and Mopsy. She disappeared soon after this was taken

As we watched the photos go up in smoke, I sat in shock, remembering my little friend Mopsy, and wondering why Tim would do such a horrible thing to her.  Mom packed up the cropped photos and negatives and started putting everything back in the closet, and I wondered, if Tim takes us away from Mom, is he going to beat us and throw us against the walls too?

It is usually never possible to completely purge someone from one's life, and in this case, Mom missed just a handful of family photos. A few were not stored with the others, and remain intact to this day.  This is one of two that I have that escaped the photo purge of 1972:

The first five kids, with Tim in the center

I don't know what happened between Mom and Tim after that.  I just know that when you fast-forward to June of 1974, things between them are back to normal. She still hated his wife Delores. We rarely visited with his family.  But he was obviously back in good graces, as evidenced by this next photo, taken in 1974 on my graduation day from St Vincent's school. And here we are, getting our picture taken by Mom, standing in front of the fireplace where nearly all of his childhood photos were purged 2 short years before.

On the way to my graduation, Tim back on Eagle Street, like nothing ever happened.

Just recently, I have been researching family records which can be found on Ancestry.com. I found the record of Tim's marriage to Dolores.  It occurred in April, 1972.  And there was the answer to my question of why his photos were destroyed.  I believe the news of Tim's marriage to the despised woman is what triggered that manic purge of the photos, which to an 11 year old, was a very bewildering and scary day on Eagle Street. 

Everything normal is wrong

Life on Eagle Street was bewildering in many ways. Our Mom had her own way of viewing the world.  Under her watch, things that were normal and should not have been an issue became strange and questionable.

Take for instance, school and church:

Mom sent us youngest three kids to St Vincent's Catholic school for the full 8 years.  She told the Principal that we were Catholic even though were not.  She actually hated Catholicism, and this created a conflict for us kids.

In class, we were taught that a good Catholic must go to church every Sunday, but Mom wouldn't allow us to go to Mass.  Instead, she would select a random church and drop us off there to attend Sunday School.  We had to boldly go into some strange place and pretend we were members. Mom had grown up a Methodist, but for some mysterious reason, she never dumped us at a Methodist church. Sometimes it would be the Lutheran church, the denomination in which we were baptized.  Sometimes it was a Southern Baptist church.  The one that stuck was the Congregational Church.  We kids loved that one, but had to keep it a secret, because our school teachers told us that the only real church was Catholic and to go anywhere else was a waste of time and a sin. So from the time I was six years old, I felt like I was living a double life.

During the week, I went to Confession and Holy Communion and pretended I was Catholic. But on Sunday, I learned Bible stories and sang hymns in the Mission Hills First Congregational Church. I grew up feeling guilty that I was, in essence, cheating on the Catholic church.  And there was always that fear that one of my classmates would see me leaving the protestant church on Sunday and rat on me at school on Monday.

Normal family activities are wrong: 

There was a family of eight who lived in a two-story house on Eagle Street. They were Catholic and all the kids went to St Vincent's like we did. The whole family went to Mass together every Sunday, and then their dad would play ball out on Eagle Street with his kids. They had the parish priest over for dinner one Sunday each month. They had backyard barbecues, went on family ski trips, and on the weekends went horseback riding and sailing.  I wanted us to do some of those things too, and I asked mom why she and Dad never played with us or why we didn't go to church together, or go anywhere together for that matter. 

Mom's answer was full of cruel nonsense:  That family had a bunch of bad older kids that ran away from home because their parents beat them. Their mother was a nurse at Sharp Hospital, and working mothers were bad mothers. Their Dad was a secret Jew.  They were sucking up to the priests in order to keep his Jewish status under wraps. They were all going to get cancer from barbecue and being out in the sun.  So even though the family looked and acted pretty happy, they were a horrible family with many secrets and were not taking care of their kids, according to Mom. She did not like being compared to other families, and her way of dealing with questions was to demonize other people in order to make our weird family seem normal.

Certain Toys were bad:
Like every other little girl in the 60's, I wanted a Barbie Doll.  Everybody had at least one, and the girls who lived in the two-story house had dozens of them, along with hundreds of outfits. Every time I asked Mom for one for my birthday or Christmas, she would scoff at me and tell me that I couldn't have a Barbie Doll because "they give little girls bad ideas."  I often wondered what kind of bad ideas my neighborhood friends were getting from their dolls.  From what I could tell, you just dressed them over and over again.  Maybe the bad idea involved scissors, because eventually, all the dolls ended up getting their hair wrecked and cut. Ironically, she finally got me a Barbie when I was a teen and way past the Barbie stage.  I was expected to be grateful, so I smiled for the Christmas photo, but I was thinking: why now, when I don't want dolls anymore?  I realize now that Mom saw I was growing up, and she desparately wanted me to remain a little girl.

Even Marriage seemed Wrong:

My two oldest sisters, Patricia and Susan, left Eagle Street at very young ages and got married when they were still teenagers. When I was just a little kid, Mom told me that Patti's husband was so bad, Patti tried to gas herself and her two kids. She told me that Susan's husband smothered their baby son and then pretended to find him dead in the dresser drawer that he slept in.. Brother Tim, who was in the Air Force, married very young as well, and Mom hated his wife.  All she told me about Tim's wife is that she was a whore who had only one ear, and that Mom tried to stop the marriage by going to Tim's commanding officer.  She wasn't happy when Lynda got married either.

Mom had no respect for her kids if they dared to date someone, because that made them loose and immoral. She was even more upset with them if they started "living in sin" with their partner. She was really disgusted when Darwin moved in with Liz, and became livid when Darwin then dumped Liz to move in with Mary. But she seemed to equally disrespect her kids if they made things legal with a marriage certificate.  I grew up thinking that marriage was not something to plan for or to dream about.  It was just another bad thing that Mom would not approve of, and there would be nothing but grief in the aftermath.

Mom's weird way of looking at normal things was confusing for me.  My common sense told me that Mom's opinions were not mainstream thinking.  But it wasn't smart to question her too much.  To do so would get you slapped across the face.  So on Eagle Street, we needed to just let her talk, keep our opinions to ourselves, and leave home as soon as the opportunity arose. And that brings me to the saddest thing:

Growing up and Leaving home is wrong: 

Mom's ultimate nightmare was to be left by herself. She did not want her kids to ever leave the nest.  And because of her extreme need to keep the children under her control, she did not want us to develop relationships with anyone other than her.  There was no talk of going away to college.   She didn't even really care if we graduated from high school.  She wanted us to never grow up and depart Eagle Street.  So any normal activity that is expected of a young person on their way to independent adulthood was wrong.  This desperate attempt to keep us home and under her control backfired:  It propelled all of us to leave her as soon as we could.

Lessons not learned

People usually need to learn life lessons the hard way.  A little kid generally needs to burn his fingers on the stove only once before he learns to avoid the flame.  Some, however, need to touch the fire over and over again before finally figuring out that it isn't a very good idea to do so. And some people seemingly never learn from their mistakes, and repeat the same action over and over again.  Mom was one of those people that never seemed to learn her lesson when it came to men.

Paris Young bluffed his way into our lives on Eagle Street.  After a five-month nightmare, he suddenly disappeared forever on December 1, 1975.  He left a welding shop full of half-finished orders, and customers calling when too much time had lapsed.  Mom spent several weeks in bed, supposedly recovering from her miscarriage.  I don't even remember celebrating Christmas that year.  But eventually,  Mom couldn't ignore her responsibilities.  She hired a family friend to manage the office, and put out an ad in the help wanted column of the San Diego Union newspaper to find a welder to finish the jobs.  Luckily she found a guy, freshly out of the Navy, who had welding skills.  He started on the jobs and projected to finish everything by February or March.

Mom set up the huge grill and stocked the fridge in the shop for the next three months. There were always fresh hamburgers cooking for lunch, so the welder, whose nickname was "FlyBoy,"  would have no reason to leave the shop to go get lunch.  There were two office rooms.  I moved all my dogs into the back office.  The business manager worked out of the front office.  After school I went to the shop to care for the animals.  I would walk them up and down busy University Avenue, past all the bars where the nightly drama of Mom searching for Paris, finding him, and then fighting with him for hours afterwards replayed again and again in my memory.

One thing that I learned about convicts is that they all have a close-knit little posse of felonious friends. When Paris was in prison, he had a buddy named Marvin O'Dell Vaughan, A-36491.  His nickname was Dale, and while Mom was busy writing to Paris, she made me start writing to "Uncle Dale."  I was just a very young teen girl and had no desire to penpal with an old guy, but Mom made me write him at least twice a week.  She told me to just write about my own interests, so Uncle Dale learned all about Poodles, color inheritance, pedigrees, etc.  It must have bored him to tears.  His nickname for me was "December Doll." When Paris got released from prison, I was released from my responsibility to write letters to Uncle Dale, and he soon became a distant memory.

Here is Uncle Dale's flowery writing on a photo Mom sent him in 1974.  He returned it when he came to Eagle Street.

Sometime in early February 1976, Uncle Dale was released from Soledad Prison.  He called Mom, told her how horrible he felt about what Paris did to her, and said he was taking the bus down to San Diego to visit her.  Mom was instantly happy and excited.  She made plans to entertain him that night, and this entertainment did not include us kids.  When Skippy, who had been released from Susanville Prison in August of 1975, came by for his daily meal and handout, Mom told him he needed to babysit us kids at the Welding shop for the night.  We packed our sleeping bags, and Mom dropped us off around 4 PM.  I set up camp in the back office with my dogs.  The little kids set up their sleeping bags in the front office with Skippy.  We had Top Ramen for dinner, and then settled in for the night.

Inner City University Avenue was a very noisy and scary place at night.  Cars were constantly speeding by.  We heard brakes screeching and engines being revved up.  There were occasional screams from women and angry male voices. Sirens from police cars and fire trucks bounced off the walls of the dark garage all evening. The little kids were restless and a bit frightened. We had no TV to keep us occupied.  There were no Game Boys, cell phones or Kindles invented yet, so there was nothing to grab their attention.  I buried my nose in books until I passed out on the floor sometime in the night.

I was jarred awake by the sound of someone pounding on my office door. It was Skippy.  He was yelling at us to get up, because Mom called the office and wanted us to come home immediately.
It was really late, and Skippy was urging us to hurry up because he didn't know if the busses were still running.  We got the kids in their jackets, exited the shop and walked a couple blocks to wait at the bus stop.  It was probably around 11:00 PM or so.  The last number 7 bus came by, and Skippy got us all on the bus.  I was hiding a puppy in my jacket and hoped he wouldn't make any noise.  The bus dropped us at Park Boulevard.  The bus driver told Skippy that there were no more busses to transfer to that night, so we set out on the long 1.5 mile walk home along a dark and deserted University Avenue.  We got home around midnight or a little later.  Mom was frazzled and freaked out.  I asked her where Uncle Dale was, and she screamed at me to get the kids to bed and never mention his name again.

I have no idea what happened between Mom and Uncle Dale that night. All I know is that we never heard from him again. She must have found something out about Dale that was unsettling, even to her low standards.  I also don't know why Mom made us take the bus home so late at night, when she could have drove to the shop and picked us up.  Today,  if you go to the Megan's law website and type in Marvin ODell Vaughan, you will see his name still there.  He has been missing for several years.  He was convicted of Lewd or Lascivious acts with a child under 14 years of age.  It looks like soon after he disappeared from Eagle Street on that clear cold night in February, he got into more trouble and went back into custody, with a final release date in 1977.

Soon after Uncle Dale left, another posse member started writing to Mom.  His name was Talmadge DeWitt Smith, or TD for short. He was serving time at Tehachapi Prison. Mom started writing to TD, and by the summer of '76, we were once again setting out on the road for prison visits. The drive was shorter, and did not require an overnight stay.  Mom would round us kids out of bed in the middle of the night.  This time we traveled in the huge pick up truck instead of the Volvo. We were on the road by 3 AM. 

Halfway through, Mom would get sleepy.  She hadn't yet become morbidly obese again, so she would cram herself against the driver's side door, and let me slide next to her on the bench seat behind the wheel, and take over the driving.  I had just gotten my driver permit and loved the opportunity to practice.  Mom would nod off, and I sped through the dark desert at 4:30 in the morning. There was no one else on the road.  If I happened to see a cop, I would yell for mom to wake up, and she would resume driving.  The little kids were usually asleep for the trip, but once in a while Jeff would wake up and voice his disapproval.  He didn't like how fast I was driving and I am sure it was just plain scary for him to see Mom passed out and 15 year old Tammy taking over.  I would just tell him to shut up and go back to sleep.  We would arrive at the prison early in the morning, and waste a perfectly good weekend day sitting in a busy prison visiting room.  I had already told Mom I had no interest in having a relationship with TD or with any other prisoner, and would not talk to him.  I spent the day reading.

In early 1977, TD was released and came to Eagle Street to live. Mom bought a used camper that attached to the bed of the pick up truck.

Our halfway house for convicts

And suddenly, we had a curbside vacation home for released convicts.  TD was a wannabe country music star.  He used to brag that he was a song writer, and that he wrote the songs that George Jones  and Tammy Wynette sang.  He had an electric guitar and an amplifier. Mom bought him a used Cadillac, and he just kind of hung around.  He stayed away from us kids, and that's all I cared about.  After a few months, Mom and TD had some kind of falling out.  It had something to do with a stolen gas station credit card.  She sold his electric guitar and amplifier, which made him really angry.  One day, TD was gone for good.

Right on the tail of TD's exit, another posse member hit town.  Freshly released from prison, Tommy Adams came on the scene.  A little skinny country boy from Georgia, Tommy had a thick pompadour, all greased up with Bryl Crème.  Mom gave him Paris's blue leisure suit, and Tommy would wear it when he would walk up to the corner bar on Washington Street to get drunk every day.
He would get sloshed and then stagger home.  On time he was so drunk that he had to crawl home on his hands and knees and he wet his pants.  The leisure suit had to go into the trash. When he was drunk, he would cry about his hopes and dreams.

I often got stuck listening to him as he cried, lamenting the fact that he used to be a truck driver, and that all he ever wanted was a Peterbilt truck.  Over and over again, he would slur his dreams:  "I love yo mutha, and I wanna marry yo mutha and be a dad-deh to you, Jeff-er-reh, and little Doll bay-beh, and please can you tell your mutha that I wish she could get me a Peterbilt Truck?"  Alcohol fumes leaked from his pores.  A big black circle of hair grease stained the wall behind the chair he sat in.  His face was bloated and red.  His blue eyes were wet and puffy.  He was a pathetic alcoholic.  I would tell him I didn't want a new daddy and ignore his whines.

Tommy actually left Eagle Street for a month to go see his sister in Georgia, and returned in a big Peterbilt-type tractor.  He had a little white Poodle named Foo-Foo with him, and we kept the dog and renamed him Solo.  After a second stay in our camper, Tommy left for good, just in time for the final posse member to rotate in.

Jim Pourzanis was an old skinny, grey haired man who looked like a Billy goat.  I know almost nothing about this guy.  He just showed up one day, and Mom set him up in the camper.  Jim was a quiet, useless human being; he was an empty shell of a person.  He didn't work or even pretend to want to work.  He just came in the house every day and sat in Tommy's chair.  That's about all he did.  He had a peculiar smell about him.  An old, unwashed, no deodorant smell.  Looking back on it, the man seemed extremely depressed.  Mom didn't even like him, but seemed unable to send him on his way.  He hung out for several months, and one day he was just gone.

By 1978, the final prison loser had come and gone.  Mom wasted the better part of the '70's investing untold amounts of energy, emotion, and money on these useless dregs of society.  They were worthless parasites who somehow sweet talked their way into our lives on Eagle Street.   The effect that they had on Mom was profound.  By the end of this era, Mom had gained back all the weight she had lost when she fell in love with Paris Young. With the weight gain came the diabetes, high blood pressure, and in 1978, the first of many heart attacks.

Mom never learned her lesson, she just ran out of posse members.  But these years jaded me forever. To this day I have no sympathy for convicts, alcoholics, or drug addicts.  I know that every single one of them lied, stole, and wore out their welcome with their family members and friends. I feel no need to take on their problems or to be their savior.  I am not a sucker. Mom never learned, but these were lessons I certainly learned on Eagle Street.