Mom's Identities

In this day and age, reality is not based on facts as much as it is based on feelings.  It is very chic to reinvent one's self and to force others to go along with one's fantasy life. To not accept a person for who they say they are is now considered bigoted or mean-spirited.  We are not allowed to question anyone, even if it is so obvious that their lives are not reality-based. In order to get along, we must enter a person's fantasy world and pretend right along with them.

Mom was way ahead of her time.  She was an original identity-fluid person way before such a thing was cool. She did not really think it was all that necessary to stick with one name, or one birth date, or one story. She had no problem changing things up a bit if it meant getting an emotional or monetary benefit.

Mom told me to never allow the government to take copies of my fingerprints, or to ever get a tattoo.  This advice was for one simple reason:  Both were used to identify a person.  It did make perfect sense to me.  Coming from a family where two of the older brothers were juvenile delinquents serving time for burglary and other crimes, I could see where a person choosing theft as his career choice might not want identifying prints or tattoos on record.  But I think Mom's reasoning was that you could have different identities more easily if you didn't have that big attention-grabbing  tattoo of a black widow spider catching a fly plastered all over the side of your neck.

When I was about 5 years old, Mom came to me with a pencil and paper and told me that I needed to write a letter to some rich guy and tell him how poor we were.  She wanted me to say that Dad had no job and that we didn't have enough to eat.  I kept asking her why I had to write a letter like that when Dad had a job and our cupboard was full of cans. I couldn't wrap my mind around a new identity as a poor, unfed child.  After many attempts, Mom finally gave up on her scheme to get money from someone who was trying to help people in need.

Mom maintained two identities after her confidential marriage to Paris Young.  She kept her Carol Warriner driver's license, but added an additional driver's license under the name Angel Young.  She could then identify as one or the other depending on the circumstances.  Cashing her social security check required the Warriner ID.  But her preferred identity was Angel Young for business ventures like clowning and dog selling.

As Carol, Mom listed her year of birth as 1929, when it was actually 1921.

As Angel, Mom gave 1935 as her year of birth.  She just kept getting younger as time went by. By the time she passed away in 1986, she was the same age as her oldest daughter, who was born in 1940.

Her relatives knew her as Carol, while her newer associates only knew her as Angel. She had a hard time convincing her older friends to call her Angel.  Her story to them was that her parents named her Angel Carol Jane, but her deceased husband Darwin had never liked the name and insisted on calling her Carol instead.  I don't know if they bought the story, and some of them had to continuously correct themselves when they would slip up and call her by her real name.  I knew Paris had come up with that name for her and that she was lying to her friends. I felt bad when they were made to feel uncomfortable if they forgot to participate in her fantasy world. But I couldn't say anything, because if I did,  I would get slapped across the face for pointing out the truth, days later, when I least expected it.

Mom invented different life stories for different audiences.  For example, her newer friends and business associates were told that her only children were Darwin, me, and the two youngest kids.  All the others were step-children that she took on when she married Darwin.  She would lament to her audience that she devoted her entire life to raising his kids, and they grew up to treat her so disrespectfully.  Again, I would hear her tell these lies and knew better than to say a word. It just made me wonder what lies was she telling that I didn't know the truth about.

She told her older associates, the ones who knew for a fact that the first six kids were her biological children,  that her three youngest kids were also her flesh and blood children.

Mom also liked to pretend she was trained in various fields.  She believed that if you thought you were something, you were. Among her fake accomplishments, she claimed to be a barber and swimming teacher, and displayed a fake barber's certificate and a fake swimming instructor's certificate to prove it.  And while she was pretty good at teaching people how to swim, I can attest that she was no barber.

The fluid identity thing permeated the whole family in one way or another.  From the beginning of our lives on Eagle Street, the three youngest kids were not who we thought we were.  I was legally adopted, but didn't know it yet, and the two youngest children came into the family without the proper paperwork. Mom wanted everyone to believe that she had given birth to us youngest three, and even though she always hid behind people in most photographs, she made sure she was photographed holding baby Jeff, and looking 9 months pregnant with the baby that would be born one week later.

Mom wanted this photo to prove that she was somehow able to give birth to two babies in 1966. So she packed a pillow under her dress, and made sure she looked as big as possible.  She wrote on the photo that it was taken November 1, 1966, but overlooked the fact that the printing date on the photo is October.

When Paris entered the scene,  Mom told us our names were no longer Warriner.  We were told to identify with the surname Young. When I went back to school for my sophomore year at the Academy of Our Lady of Peace, I told the teachers that I had a new name.  They didn't buy into it, and stated that until they saw legal papers proving it, they would continue to call me by my legal name.  That annoyed Mom to no end, but she didn't want to push it and get them looking closer at our family. So I was a Warriner at school, and a Young everywhere else.

One of the things I hated about Mom's ever-changing story is that I was pulled into it.  She told her sister Amy that I insisted on calling myself "Little Amy," and photos she sent to Aunt Amy identified me as such.  When dealing with customers who came to buy our puppies or get their dogs groomed, Mom would brag to them that I was so smart that I had skipped high school and was in college studying veterinary science. Even on my high school graduation day, Mom bragged to her friends that I was graduating from college.  It kind of made me feel like my real accomplishment wasn't good enough.

As Mom got older and sicker, she knew her time would soon be up.  And she made me promise not to post her obituary in the San Diego newspapers, because she didn't want anyone knowing her age or how many kids she had.   When Mom passed away, at the age of 64, her friends were shocked that someone so young could have a heart attack. One of them wiped away tears and said,  "She was only 45 years old, what a shame!" I honored Mom's secret and didn't correct her.

Mom's Marriages

May 17th was the day Mom celebrated her wedding anniversary to Darwin S. Warriner.  She always told me that the best way to get married is to get a confidential marriage license because then you don't need to take a syphilis test.  But I always thought that she had other motives.  It got me a bit curious about her marriages, so I did a bit of research.  

When Mom married the first time, it was in September, 1939.  I found an announcement in the Detroit Free Press, dated Sept 26, 1939.  When she married Charles "Bill" Tompsett, he was 18 and she was 17.

Her next marriage was to Darwin S Warriner.  It occurred on May 17, 1950, and even though they lived in Detroit, Michigan, they traveled all the way to Woodstock, Virginia to get it done.

Curiously, she and Darwin married a second time.  This time, it was 6 months later, on November 3, 1950, and they did it in Detroit, Michigan.

Why did they go to all the trouble of getting married twice? I am not certain of their motives.

Many years ago I attempted to verify Mom's marriage to Paris Young and found that the rules are very strict. Confidential marriages are not posted in the newspaper.  A curious person cannot go on a fishing expedition, send off for a search of marriage records, and expect to receive any information. You must provide the exact date of marriage and the exact full names of the bride and the groom.  If you do that, you will receive a letter that will either verify what you already know, or will state that they did not find any evidence of a marriage based on the information you submitted. Since I knew the date of the marriage-July 11, 1975, and the full names of the parties involved, I was able to get verification that Mom did indeed marry Paris Young.

Did she marry anyone else?  I don't think so, but because of the confidential marriage rules, I guess we'll never know for sure!

The Help

It was a hot Sunday summer afternoon, sometime in 1972, around the same time Mom cut up all of Tim's photos and started telling me that my siblings and I were going to be placed in a county home. Mom was bothered about something and suddenly gathered us kids into the car to go for a Sunday ride. She drove south on a freeway, then exited into a neighborhood I did not recognize. This place was not Mission Hills.   The streets were made up of tiny wood-sided houses. Some had a few boarded up windows.  Most had no lawns, just dirt yards with overflowing garbage cans and trash piled up in the driveways.A couple of mothers were sitting on dilapidated porch steps in bathrobes and wearing pink fluffy slippers, holding bottles for their babies.  Kids were playing ball in the street, and men were leaning under the hoods of their cars. 

As we drove slowly past, our brand new blue Volvo obviously drew their attention, because they just stopped and looked at us as we went past. We drove down several streets, all with the same scene being playing out.  Then Mom turned down another street and drove onto a packed dirt driveway all the way past the tiny white cottage, and parked near the back door.  She had obviously been to this house before.  There were no kids playing on this street,  and no one was sitting out on the porch.  It was a little old house, but it was neat, with no trash piled up outside, and all its windows were intact. Although there was no grass, there was a tiny bit of color from a small window box that was filled with geranium-like flowers. I asked Mom where we were and she just told me to be quiet and keep the little kids in the car.

She went to the back porch and knocked on the door.  An elderly black woman answered.  She was wearing a white dress and a blue apron.  Her hair was grey and she wore little cat glasses with a chain hanging from each side. Mom started talking to the lady quietly.  I sat in the car, feeling very confused.  Then Mom started talking faster and louder, and I heard her saying, "Please, Mrs. Nash, please, you have to help me.  I can't do this anymore and I need you to come back!"

The old woman, who had been just standing on her back stoop and listening patiently, started shaking her head.  I heard her say, "I am sorry, Mrs. Warriner, I just can't come to work for you anymore.  I am a very old woman and cannot work anymore.  I am so sorry, but I just can't help you."

Mom kept trying to bargain with her about what her duties would be if she came back.  But the woman was adamant and finally said, "Please, Mrs. Warriner, I can't do this anymore, please go away and don't ask me again.  Please, Please!" She then went back inside and left Mom standing on her back porch, flustered and upset.

After getting back in the car, Mom silently backed out of the driveway to the street, and headed for the freeway. I waited for what I thought was a safe amount of time before asking the obvious question, "Who was that lady?"

All Mom said was, "That was Mrs. Nash.  She was Darwin's nanny when he was little.  She helped me take care of him and she did some housework too.  I wanted her to come back and help me with you kids, but I guess she doesn't want to work anymore."

I was stunned and didn't know what to say.  The reason why I was stunned is because of the shocking and horrible racism I witnessed over the years, most of it displayed by Mom.  She did not like African-American people at all and would honk her car horn at any black person who dared to be seen in Mission Hills. It was embarrassing to be in the car with her when she would try to intimidate and frighten them. She had no problem shouting out the N word at them.  Based on her bad behavior, I could not imagine Mom allowing any African-American person in our house.  It just didn't make any kind of sense to me.  We never spoke of Mrs. Nash again.  That is my only knowledge of this person.  But Lynda knows much, much more.

Here is Lynda's memory of when Mom used hired help on Eagle Street:

" We often had ladies come in and do housework in the 50s.  We had many Mexican women, but none of them stayed for too long. Mrs. Nash stayed with us for quite a while.  Now keep in mind that I was between the ages of 5 and 9 when Mrs. Nash was working at our house.  So it was about 1953 to 1956 or so. She didn't seem old when I knew her.  She was tall and heavy set.  Mom wouldn't allow her to use the front door, so she arrived through our side door, which opened into a tiny room with laundry tubs and then into the kitchen.  Mom loved having a cleaning lady.  She called Mrs. Nash "Nanny."

Mrs. Nash made us breakfast.  Most of the time she made pancakes but sometimes she made some kind of hot mush cereal.  It was probably grits, but we didn't call it that. Then she cleaned the house, did the laundry, and took care of us little kids.  She was very fond of little Darwin, who was a toddler at the time.  She combed my hair and fixed my clothes. Sometimes Mrs. Nash would tell us stories and sing us songs that we never heard before or since. I was so young I can't recall particulars, but looking back, I am sure they were passed down through her family.  I think Mom could see that she had a way with us, and it kind of bothered her.  Mom wouldn't let us eat lunch with her.  Mom would shoo us outside and Mrs. Nash would eat her lunch alone.

Mrs. Nash worked very hard to keep the house clean.  Mom always insisted that she get on her hands and knees to scrub the floors.  Mrs. Nash washed the walls and windows too.  Our house was spotless during this time.  Even though she worked hard, Mom was not very nice to her.  She yelled at her and I think sometimes she didn't pay her what she was owed.  I remember Mrs. Nash needed bus fare to get back home, and Mom didn't want to give it to her.

There were a few times that Mrs. Nash was very sick but she still came to Eagle Street and spent the day taking care of little Darwin, Skip and Me, and cleaning the house.  And Mom still treated her badly.  One time, Mrs. Nash had to bring her little girl with her.  I was excited to have a girl my age in the house to play with, but Mom told me not to touch or go near the girl.

Tim picked up on Mom's racism and cruelty.  He was very disrespectful to Mrs. Nash, and told Mom he wanted to get his own maid when he grew up.  He would accuse Mrs. Nash of not doing her job.  For instance, after she made up our beds, Tim messed them up and then told Mom that Mrs. Nash didn't make the beds.  Skippy never let him get away with it, and he told Mom that Tim was lying, that he messed up the beds after Mrs. Nash fixed them.  Tim didn't get in trouble for lying, but Skippy got beat up by Tim for ratting him out.

Mrs. Nash started coming over less and less and soon was not coming at all.  Mom drove us down to her house a couple of times to try to convince her to come back.  She lived in a very bad part of town, somewhere close to National City.  Mom tried to butter her up, using us kids to get to her heart.  Especially little Darwin.  She told her how much Darwin missed her.  But, on her turf, our former nanny was tougher than she was when she was on Eagle Street.  My last memory of Mrs. Nash was of her walking over to the car, looking in the back seat where we were sitting, and telling us she loved us and would always remember us.  I don't have one bad memory of that lady.  She had dignity and class, and a great deal of patience.

When I think of Mrs. Nash today, I recall a very kind and badly treated woman.  I wish I had been mature enough, when I got older, to look her up and say thank you to her."


I am so glad Lynda shared the story of Mrs. Nash.  This is one of many shameful dramas that was witnessed by the walls of 4071 Eagle Street.

When Mom was in the Hospital

Mom was not a healthy person.  By the time I joined the family, she was very overweight, diabetic and hypertensive.  Like her younger brother Dick, she had a tendency towards blood clots and what she called, "bad circulation."  She had to be hospitalized at least a couple of times in the mid-sixties for blood clots in her legs.

Back in those days, children were not allowed to visit in the hospital.  It was scary and strange to not have mother at home. I remember one particular time when she was in the hospital.  I was about 4 or 5 years old.  Lynda actually took me to the hospital and since I couldn't go inside, we stood on the grass outside the tall building.  Lynda told me to look up very high. Sure enough, there was Mom in the window waving at us.  It made me feel so much better to see her, even if it was a great distance up.

The one good thing about not having Mom at home was that I was able to spend some time with Dad.  He read me the newspaper funnies and did the daily kids word puzzle with me. For breakfast, he had two menu choices:  We would have either:  Pancakes with butter, syrup and sugar, or White bread broken up into pieces, tossed in a bowl, splashed with milk and sprinkled with sugar. You had to eat the latter really quickly, before it turned into a soppy sugary mess. Dad set up blocks all over the living room with me, and he sat me up on his huge garage workbench and gave me nuts and bolts and other things for me to play with while he worked on his projects.  He was a kind and patient man when Mom was in the hospital.

One night during one of Mom's hospitalizations, I woke up late at night from a nightmare.  I left my room and wandered down the hall, making a right turn into the kitchen.  It was very dark, with just a tiny night light making the kitchen a shadowy grey instead of completely black.  There was a big water cooler on the kitchen counter near the sink, where Mom dumped bottles of Pure-Flo Distilled water.  She covered the opening on top with a plate, and then kept her ripe bananas in a basket on top of the plate.  And even though it was a familiar object, present since I joined the family, the silhouette it created in the dark was terrifying.  I was certain it was an enemy robot.

Look behind my head and you will see what I thought was a monster robot 6 years earlier. The basket in right upper corner usually held bananas and sat on top of the cooler.  I don't know why there is a wax paper dispenser up there in this photo

I immediately launched into what my father termed a "blood curdling scream," which brought him running out of his bedroom.  He flipped on the overhead light.  Big black roaches, who had been roaming around on the floor, went skittering under the sink to escape the light.  Dad picked me up and asked me what had happened.  Through my hysterical sobs, I told him about the nightmare and about the monster robot in the kitchen.  He wiped away my tears, sat me up on the counter and had me pour a cup of water from the cooler.  When I was calmed down, he told me I just needed a little something in my tummy and then I would be able to sleep.  Setting me back on the floor, he told me to go to the cupboard and select whatever I wanted from our collection of canned goods.  I picked out the Princella candied yams.  He opened the can, dumped the yams in a little metal sauce pan, heated them on the stove, and served me up a few pieces.   Then he sat with me while I ate.  I was able to go back to sleep and never had a fear of robots again. And to this day, candied yams are my ultimate comfort food.

And here is a great memory from Lynda:

"Jeff was just a baby when Mom got another bad blood clot in her leg.  She went to the hospital and was there for a week. They put her in a bed and placed cold compresses around her legs.  The compresses were made of pale green heavy rubber and contained some kind of squishy jell material that froze up quickly when placed in the freezer.  Mom missed baby Jeff and was afraid he would forget her.  It was the mid 60's, and little kids under the age of 12 were not allowed to visit patients. Mom pleaded with them to make an exception, but they would not. Jeff was a very sensitive and sweet boy, and he really missed Mom and wanted to see her too.   I had to do something.

Dad, Tammy and Baby Jeff, in 1966, around the time of Mom's hospitalizations.

Well, I came up with an idea that I was going to try. Security was not a factor at hospitals back then.  They didn't have all the security guards walking around like they do now.  So I thought my idea would work.  I got a big strong cardboard box, just big enough for Jeff to fit into.  In the living room, we played with it, I put him in the box and let him play inside it.  I told him if he wanted to see Mom, he would have to stay in the box and not make a sound.  And then we practiced.  I told him to keep very quiet no matter what sounds he heard until I said "NOW." And then when he heard that word, he could stand up in the box.  I told him this was the only way he would be able to see Mom in the hospital and if he didn't do exactly what I told him, he could not go.  After practicing many times, I felt he was ready.

I decorated the box with a big homemade bow and drove to the hospital with Jeff and the box.  After parking the car, I put little Jeff in the box, reminded him to be very quiet, and carried the "gift" into the hospital, onto the elevator, and down the corridor, past the nurses station and orderlies, until I got to Mom's room.  Jeff was quiet as a mouse the whole time.  Mom looked up when I entered her room.  And then I said, "NOW!"  Right on cue, little Jeff stood up, pushing the lid up.  Mom and Jeff were ecstatic.  And then a nurse walked in.  After freezing with a look of shock on her face, her expression softened.  She briefly smiled, then said, "I am going to turn around and walk out of here, and the box better be gone by the time I get back." Mom hugged and kissed little Jeffrey.  They had a sweet reunion, and both felt better.  Jeff didn't want to get back inside the box, but he did.  Mom, being her typical self, took advantage of the smuggling situation by placing one of the hospital's rubber cold compresses in the box for me to smuggle out with Jeff so she would have a way to treat her sore legs at home. Wonder what ever happened to that compress bag?"

Thanks Lynda!  I do remember those green compresses.  Mom had 4 or 5 of them in the freezer even to the day she died in 1986!   They were perfect for icing my injured knees and sore back, and I took them to live in my own freezer into the 90s.  At that point,  I loaned them to my husband's parents and I never saw them again.

Easter on Eagle Street

Easter was fun for us kids. Mom and Dad went all out to make sure we had a great time.  Unlike every other family I knew, we did not go on Easter egg hunts.  Because at our house, the Easter Bunny did not just hide the eggs--he hid the entire Easter basket.  Peter Cottontail, better known as the Easter Bunny, would come to our house while we were sleeping and hide our baskets somewhere in the house.  Then when we woke up on Easter morning, we would go searching everywhere to find them.  The rules were simple: You knew what your basket looked like because you had the same one every year and it had your name on it. Mine was the pink basket for many years.  If you happened upon someone else's basket, you were required to leave it alone and not say anything.

On the day before Easter, someone was tasked with going down to the scary basement to retrieve the Easter box.  This box contained all of our baskets, colorful plastic grass, and plastic eggs that would hold candies. After the little kids were in bed, Mom would get out her electric egg cooker.  It would hard boil seven eggs at a time.  She would cook two or three dozen eggs, then she would color them using the Paas egg color kit and some vinegar.

This was the exact model of Mom's egg cooker

Mom spent the 40 days of Lent stowing away Easter candy. She hid everything underneath piles of clothing in her closet.  We kids loved Easter candy, because it was special and only available during this time of year. It wasn't just everyday stuff like M & M's  or Reece's rewrapped in pastel colors like they do now. Here is a partial list of our seasonal treats:

60's Easter candy that was in our baskets every year

Peeps (which were usually just yellow, I liked them, but most of the kids did not)
Brach's jelly bird eggs (we all hated the licorice flavor)
Malted milk robin's eggs (pastel colors with flecks.  Also called Fiesta eggs at one time)
Brach's Marshmallow eggs (hard candy coating, softer chewy white inside, also known as Easter egg hunt eggs, and are now hard to find because most stores don't carry them anymore.  If I could still find them, I would eat them until they were all gone)
Big hollow Chocolate Bunnies (fun to bite off their ears)
Chocolate covered Marshmallow Bunnies
Chocolate covered Marshmallow eggs (packaged in a egg carton.  Mom loved these)
Brach's chocolate covered eggs with soft fillings like Maple, Fruit and Nut, and Vanilla  (the gateway candy to See's Chocolates. These wouldn't last 2 minutes in my basket)

On the night before Easter, after the kids were in bed, Mom would bring out all of these candies and divvy them up between all the baskets, then she would nestle a few hard boiled colored eggs in the plastic grass. Back in the day, you didn't get sick from eating an egg that had been sitting out all night long. Sometimes she would add a special gift like a tiny wind-up duck,  a fuzzy little toy chick or bunny, (I still have my bunny, he is in the first photo) or a new coloring book and crayons.  Then Mom, and Dad if he wasn't at work, would figure out good hiding places for each kid's basket. The level of difficulty in finding it would be based on the kid's age.

Lucky Tammy, age 2, found a real Manx kitten in her basket under Mom's crafts desk. 

Easter morning was fun, fun, fun!  We kids would be running around the house looking in closets, pawing through the clothes in laundry baskets, opening the kitchen cupboards, searching everywhere until we found our basket.  For a little kid, the basket would be in an easy place,  behind Dad's chair, for example.  Or:

At age three, finding my basket underneath Mom's Hammond organ

As we got older, it took longer to find it. If we searched for more than 30 minutes with no success, Mom would start throwing out hints to get us on the right track.  Once we all found our baskets, we would immediately isolate our favorite things to eat right off the bat or to hide so that no one else would grab them when we weren't looking.  Mom would encourage us to peel and eat at least one of our real eggs before we would start in on the candyfest.  The last time my basket was hidden was Easter 1971, Dad's last Easter.  I had a really hard time finding the basket, and needed a hint from Mom.  I finally found it in the poolroom, wrapped in a plastic bag, sitting up on the top of the pool slide.  Little Jeffrey's basket was found inside the clothes dryer in the kitchen.

A 70's Easter morning.  Candy and coloring for breakfast!

For me, Easter meant going to church services  at the Mission Hills Congregational Church.  As I got dressed for church, Mom would sing an old song about wearing an Easter Bonnet at the Easter Parade.  A couple times, she actually made me wear a crazy hat and some gloves because in her day, that's what the ladies did on Easter.   I did see fancy hats on the older women in the pews on Easter, but I think I was the only little girl who carried on the tradition, and nobody was wearing gloves anymore. I hated it, but I wore them, because it didn't occur to me that I could have stowed them somewhere on my five block walk to church, and then retrieve them later on my way home. Mom wouldn't have ever known, because I was the only one in the family who went to church on Easter back in the sixties.

Yes, I had to show up at church looking like this

Here is Lynda's favorite Easter story from when she was a kid in the fifties:

"One year there was a great hunt that I will never forget. Even though we all knew the simple rule, Tim disregarded etiquette.  He always found everyone else's basket and ruined the search for the rest of us.  He truly took the fun out of the search.  Only little Darwin's basket could never be revealed--it was always hidden where he would find it right away.

One year, Dad decided that Tim was too old to get a basket and he was tired of him taking the fun away from the rest of us kids.  That year, Tim was not allowed to look for his basket until the rest of us found ours, and whoever found Tim's was not allowed to tell, or else they would forfeit their own basket.

After we had all found our baskets and were going through them, Tim, who had to wait and watch all this time, was pretty upset. As he started searching, Dad was smiling a sly smile, certain that Tim would never find it. After looking for hours without any luck, Tim was convinced that he didn't really have one.  And the rest of us were enjoying every minute of his pain. None of us had come across his basket when we were looking for our own baskets, so we had no idea where it was hidden.  Dad finally asked Tim if he gave up, and he said he had.  Then Dad made him agree that if he were to get clues of hot, warm, and cold, to help him find it, Tim would have to play by the rules in the future and leave our baskets alone.  He agreed.

Tim started out looking in the kitchen, where he heard "COLD!" than went on to each room only to hear, "COLD" and "VERY COLD."  He made it to the living room and he heard, "WARM!"  Tim perked up, with new life in his face, and started walking around, he heard, "WARMER!"  Now all of us kids were interested in this search and for the time being forgot about our candy in order to watch Tim as he made progress.

When he got near the fireplace, he heard, "OH, VERY, VERY, WARM!" We were all in suspense, Where was it? Tim looked in the fireplace, and Dad called out, "WATCH IT, YOU WILL GET BURNED!" Tim knew it had to be really close, but where?  He then stuck his head in the fireplace and looked up, and there it was!  The night before, Dad had gone up on the roof and dropped a rope down the chimney.  Then Mom tied a knot around the basket handle, and Dad had pulled the rope up the chimney so that just the bottom of the Easter basket could be seen if you carefully looked inside the fireplace.  Tim found it, but he wasn't cheerful about it.  He was pretty mad and said how unfair it was to hide it there.  He felt it was a dirty trick.

The rest of us were quite pleased that Tim finally got what was due to him.  For some reason, Tim never got in trouble or was blamed for anything.  He could do no wrong and always got his way. So it was satisfying to see him humbled a bit that morning.  The Easter Bunny sure got him good that year.  And for the record, that WAS Tim's last Easter Basket on Eagle Street."

Great story, Lynda!

After Dad passed away in 1971, our Easter fun was toned down a bit.   Mom gave me the opportunity to prepare the eggs, and fill and hide the baskets for the two youngest kids.  As we all grew up,  our tradition gradually faded away.  But Lynda and I will never forget our great Eagle Street Easters.

Fear the Blue Dot

After the manic photo purge in 1972, Mom started getting paranoid.   Following our nightly drives to eat dinner at various places, she deviated from her normal route home to take us past the Hillcrest Receiving Home. It was located on Third Avenue, in the part of Hillcrest that is now a major medical complex. It was stationed between Mercy and County hospitals and was within walking distance from Eagle Street. A sprawling county building behind very high chain link fencing, it housed children who had been taken into protective custody because they were abused at home or without  someone to care for them.  Usually they would stay there on a short term basis until the courts figured out what to do with them.  Most ended up in foster homes, others ended up back with their families. Mom would drive slowly past this children's shelter and tell me about all the terrible things that happened to kids who were put there.

She told me that big sister Susan was taken away and put there because she told her school counselor lies about her life on Eagle Street. While inside those walls, she caught head lice and got pregnant. And she never got to live at home again.  The picture she painted for me was terrifying.  The last thing I wanted was to get locked up, get lice and have a baby.  So when Mom started to warn me that there was a possibility that my two younger siblings and I would end up there, I wanted to know why.  Mom finally told me that Tim had gone to court to declare her an unfit mother, and wanted us kids taken away from her, but he didn't want to take us.  He just wanted us locked up.  That, she explained, is the reason she chopped up all the photos of Tim and burned them a few months earlier.

One day, a county vehicle drove past our house as we were sitting on the front porch.  All county trucks and cars had a distinctive round blue dot on the front doors. 

A present day blue dot.  They still make me nervous for a nanosecond

Mom pointed this symbol out and hustled me inside the house.  She warned me that a car with that same blue dot would stop at the house and take us kids away.  She instructed me to grab my siblings and run to hide whenever we saw one of those cars. So for the next several months, I went outside with my stomach in knots.  I stopped to watch every car or truck that ventured into our neighborhood to see if it had the blue dot, and a few times it did.  It never stopped at our house, but I ran inside anyhow. And I made sure I never complained about Mom or anything else to my teachers at school, because I didn't want a blue dot car showing up there to snatch me out of my classroom.

During our frequent evening drives past the Receiving Home, Mom would tell me that I needed to know how to escape the place and how to find my way home, so she would always drive the same route from the Hillcrest Receiving Home to Eagle Street so that I would know how to navigate my way back home on foot.

Fear is a effective tool of control, and Mom knew how to use it to her advantage.  Thanks to her stories about Susan's Receiving Home experience, and the constant threat of the blue dot cars,  I wanted nothing to do with Tim, had no trust for authority figures, and really felt like it was our little family of four against the world. I learned not to trust teachers, cops, counselors, or anyone else.

A St. Patrick's Day on Eagle Street

Saint Patrick's day is a big drinking event these days.  There is a parade, green beer, and the stereotype of the drunk Irishman is celebrated.  But it didn't seem like that big a deal back in the 60's and 70's in our neck of the woods.  If the day fell on a school day, you needed to be sure you had green on, or else it gave the boys an excuse to pinch you.  We didn't eat corned beef and cabbage, or watch a parade.  It was really just another ordinary day.  But there was one  St. Patrick's Day that I remember.  It was Sunday, March 17, 1974.

About a dozen Eagle Street kids, ranging in age from five to 14, were out in the street playing kickball together that afternoon.  Our kickball game was sort of like playing a fusion of baseball and dodgeball. You kicked a big rubber ball, trying to get it past the other kids who were clamoring to catch it,  and you then ran to base trying to avoid being hit with the ball before you got there. Our playing field was the street, and the bases were the four sidewalk corners at the intersection of Eagle and West Lewis Streets. It was a safe place to play because there was no traffic whatsoever.  The only cars coming through belonged to the people who lived there.

An elderly Irish widower named Mr. Martin lived two doors south of us.  His yard was full of rose bushes and he employed a full time gardener to keep them beautiful.  Usually this gardener was always busy pruning and fertilizing the roses, and mowing the expansive yard.  But today, he was different.  He was wearing dirty clothes, his hair was uncombed, and he was laying on the grass, drinking one beer after another.  I ran over to catch the ball near where he lay,  and that's when I first noticed him amid all the empty beer cans. I could tell he was drunk because he was yelling at an imaginary person.

Around 3 o'clock, one mom after another came outside and started calling their kids in to eat dinner.   My little brother and sister and I started towards home, and just as we reached the steps leading to our porch, we head a car door slam, then a gunning of an engine, then screeching tires. We turned around to look.  In a second, the drunk gardener had taken off down Eagle Street, driving past our house, slamming into parked cars on one side of the street, then the other.  He blew through the intersection of Eagle and West Lewis, where a dozen kids had been playing just a couple minutes before.  I quickly ran down the street to see what would happen next.  There was only one more short block before Eagle Street ended at a dirt road. There was a white wooden fence separating the street from the canyon leading to Mission Valley, and I wondered if he was going to stop.  After sideswiping another car,  the gardener sped up.  His car smashed through the fence, become airborne, and then disappeared from view as it descended down into the canyon.  By this time all the grown-ups had heard the noise and they came out to survey the damage that was done to their vehicles.

The end of Eagle St today.  The white fence is gone, replaced by a driveway leading down the canyon to a new house. 

Soon, the other kids joined me at the canyon's edge.  Dinner for all of us would have to wait, because somewhere down among those thick bushes and trees there was a big smashed up car and a drunk guy, and we wanted to see if the guy was dead or alive.  The police came, then the fire truck, and soon, Cathy Clark from the TV news was doing a live report as the first responders headed down a hundred feet to rescue the drunk gardener.  They carried him up out of the brush on a canvas stretcher.  He was barefoot, bloody, confused and still yelling.  It took a tow truck about an hour to drag the smashed car up and out of the canyon.

That was the most excitement Eagle Street had ever seen. Mom's car was one of a few that was not hit during the incident.  I don't know what happened to the gardener, but we never saw him working in the yard again. Mr. Martin's beautiful house and rose gardens have since been transformed into an out-of-place 11 unit condo complex. The site of the crash is now home to a couple of million dollar canyon-side houses. A big tree now grows at the end of the street to stand guard against any future car calamity. The large families that once lived on our street have been replaced by childless and very well-off professionals.  It is all different there now.  But every year when St. Patrick's day comes around, my mind revisits that day.  Thanks to the grace of God and all the mothers calling their kids home to dinner at the same time, none of us were killed by the gardener who celebrated the day by driving drunk on Eagle Street.