Backyards And Babysitters 2.
Though having a working mom and a work-at-night dad may have made me feel set apart somewhat from my contemporaries, this situation was actually beneficial for me in a number of ways. Today a number of eyebrows might well raise at what I’ve just said with the majority of women in America today, mothers or not, working outside their homes. In those days, this wasn’t so commonplace. We’re talking about the mid to late fifties. Women in large numbers had worked during World War II, building the War Machine. Now they were building families. In those days prices weren’t quite so high relative to the take-home wage. Divorce wasn’t nearly as common. Personal expectations weren’t quite so high in terms of household appliances, multiple automobiles and personal posessions generally. Right Off hand I can’t recall any of my playmates that were regularly babysat during the day. Most of my friends moms were home just about all of the time and nearly all of their dads worked in the daytime.
Looking up and down the neighborhood street in my four-year-old’s mind’s eye the closest thing to another anomalous living/working pattern I can see is Hal and Sylvia Kensler, Pammy and Fritzie’s dad. Hal went to college and also worked at Boeing. I knew of no other adult who still actually went to school! Hal and Sylvia made soap. They had relatives in Arkansas and they could show you a wad of cotton with the seeds still in it. Hal shot at the cats and dogs in the neighborhood and I had nightmares about him hurting my cream-colored Tomcat Sam.
The Kenslers had property on Vashon Island, which is merely a somewhat isolated suburb of Seattle now, but was quite wild in those days. It’s out in Puget Sound and is normally reached by FerryBoat. The Kenslers rowed across the several miles of salt water to camp on their island property. Later they bought a home up in Snoqualmie Pass, up in the Cascades. This is quite snowy in winter and was in those days quite rustic.
Sylvia used to watch me sometimes when I was little and I recall being over there for dinner or just to hang around now and again, until I was six or seven. I loved to look at the wish book around Christmas time and I liked the way Sylvia served corn on the cob, with little handles stuck in the ends so you didn’t get your fingers burned or buttery.
I’ve mentioned Pammy and Fritzie before. They were probably among my closest friends at age four or five. I don’t recall having the conflicts with them that I had with Roger up the street, the Blodgett kids next door or Vicky who was granddaughter to the Fennessees on our other side.
One could infer that these girls were reasonably comfortable with their bodies. They went about shirtless in summertime, as did I. Pam, while sitting with me in our carport one day showed me that she had "little titties" but "When I’m a teenager like Lois, they’ll be This Big." She indicated how big with her thumbs and fingers spread apart. There wasn’t anything particularly sexual about this. We were just making observations about ourselves, our surroundings and talking about pretty much anything that came to mind. I know Mom got upset at the Kensler kids who would let themselves into our house without knocking. Pam especially had a habit of coming up behind Mom and announcing herself, usually when Mom had her head under the sink or was intent on something else of particular moment. It is rather amusing that these same girls always addressed my parents as Mr. and Mrs. Plassman, though they made free with the front door. I was taught for some reason to address adults generally by their first names yet I would not enter a house until someone came and opened for me no matter how often or loudly someone yelled, "Come In!"
Not surprisingly the Kenslers were great gardeners and there was a time I recall with great amusement when I ate baby potatoes dug for me by Fritzie, wielding a shovel higher than she was, without bothering to wipe off the dirt. It never would have occurred to me that eating anything potato like could be wrong. I was always being screamed at to "Eat!"
It was probably from the Kensler girls that I learned how bad slugs were. For anyone who hasn’t been denied the pleasure, slugs are shell less snails, extremely slimy and they come in any number of colors; brown, black, reddish, bluish, even yellow. They love damp place like Western Washington and present about the most horrid sensation imaginable to a bare back, hand or foot. About the only thing you could say in their favor was they didn’t bite, though most of us kids believed firmly that they did. Of course slugs ate anything planted by our parents or our selves while scrupulously leaving weeds entirely unmolested.
Fritzie, the younger sister, and myself used to make ourselves slug spears by pounding a nail through a stick or board near the end. By bending the nail point out over the end of the stick we produced a spearhead which we poisoned with repeated stabbings into a toadstool mushroom. Thus equipped we’d go off in search of crawling horrors along with any ominous-looking insects which might happen to cross our paths.
Not all of our games were quite so bloodthirsty. Tricycles were a mainstay of our play activity. For Christmas when I was four, Santa brought me a red and black John Deere tractor with a two-speed friction motor. That meant when you moved a shift lever you could make the tricycle tractor clack at high or low speeds as you turned the pedals.
Once Dad built a two-by-four structure in which he planned to put the garbage cans to keep neighborhood dogs from knocking them over. For several weeks or perhaps longer, the structure sat over by the tool shed, sans garbage cans. I soon moved in, placing boards for flooring and excavating underneath to make a shallow basement for my trucks. Inside I set up a bench table built for me by a neighborhood boy. I hosted parties here in my little house, serving green gooseberries on the bare board table, to my guests.
It was a good bit of luck that Pam, Fritz and I never poisoned our selves. We all took such wicked glee in just having stuff thought to be deadly, red berries, probably nightshade, the mushrooms in our lawns, horse chestnuts. I don’t recall anybody getting sick though. We’d evidently been told which things were safe to pick and which things were not.
At rather extreme contrast with the Kenslers were the Blodgetts who lived on the left of us if you were standing out in front and looking toward the street. They lived in a house painted charcoal, which looked black to me. The trim was pink. I always liked their house at least from the outside because black and pink were my two favorite colors at the time.
Bob Blodgett had been in the Navy and there was a dark tattoo of a woman’s body on his left arm. He worked at Safeway like Dad but had a day shift. Bob was a usually lapsed Mormon, I.E. he drank coffee and beer and smoked, the only things I knew concerning the subject. Early on I heard that Bob was mean to his wife and kids.
Rose was from a horse ranch in Montana. Neighborhood gossip had it that that when Bob married her, Rose knew nothing at all of housework. He taught her how to sew, and then that was all she wanted to do. By the time I came along she seemed to keep house about the same as anybody else.
I watched fascinated as Rose diapered her youngest. In those days diapers were large square or rectangular pieces of absorbent cotton flannel material. One folded the expanse to the correct size and triangularity, securing in with one or two pins, depending on the size of the child and number of pins at hand. Rose always seemed to use two. Ruth Johnson got by with one.
Rose spread avocado on bread instead of butter, a practice I viewed with suspicion. She never lost her tendency to farm, keeping at various times banty chickens, rabbits, pigeons, even a horse I believe, which arrived about the time we moved out of our suburban neighborhood.
The Blodgetts had four kids. Stacey was about twelve at the time of which I’m speaking. He was a times rather like a big brother to me, for better or worse, or at least a rather bratty cousin. Stacey built me a house for my cat and the little bench, which I used as a table in my makeshift playhouse. He also threatened to Sue Me and to burn my house down. I replied that I’m just build new things for myself and he said, "Then I’d sue for that too."
Stacey worked most of the time in the summer, mowing lawns, weeding, edging, that sort of thing. He built go-carts out of old lumber and scrounged wheels. He had several savings bonds and he said openly that when he had enough money he was going to run away from home.
Pam was perhaps a year or so younger than Stacey. I think she helped her mom quite a bit and I remember her being quite maternal to us younger kids. She didn’t figure all that much in my life one way or another I think, until a bit later but she was the one in the family who seemed to care for the various animals. She also watched out for us a good deal, taking note of suspicious things we were doing and warning us "you’d better stop that or you’ll get a linckin’." I’ve already spoken of Mike who was a year younger than me. He was somewhat shorter than me but heavier and stronger. Mike was never particularly intelligent as I recall and he spoke with somewhat of a speech impediment. In those days though, if you could point a capgun and ride a trike or stickhorse there wasn’t too much else needed to help you fit in.
Mike cussed quite a lot, mostly bathroom words I think and it wasn’t at all uncommon to find that he’d gotten his butt beat and his mouth washed out with soap again.
Rose made it known that she would spank Mike and wash out his mouth with any report of him using bad language. In the way of most kids I'm chagrined to say I was happy to make it my personal business to stooge for the adults. While I never lied about him I did take every possible opportunity to report on his utterances. All I needed to do was knock on the Blodgett's door, repeat what he’d said then watch him get a spanking which I guess must’ve been exciting.
Once in an attempt to prevent me telling on him, Mike stood with his back against his front door. "It doesn’t open that way," I told him, twisting the knob behind him and allowing the door to swing inward. Mike sprawled across the living room floor. His mother promptly grabbed and started beating Mike, not seeming to care that I’d spilled her kid all over the front room and he was already crying.
Once when Mom sent Mike home so we could eat our dinner, Rose gave him a spanking. Mom inquired why Mike was being punished this time since he hadn’t really had enough time to get in trouble since leaving our house. Rose said she’d just assumed he’d done something wrong, otherwise why had we sent him home?
There was some pretty self-destructive about Mike because in the midst of all this meting out of arbitrary punishment he not only insisted on using profanity and nasty words but made sure that I heard every syllable. Eventually Mom became concerned about the amount of punishment Mike was receiving and told Rose she didn’t want me being a tattle-tale, whereupon Rose stopped listening to my reports. I don’t think Mike ever held a grudge against me for telling on him. Each day seemed to be a new beginning with Mike. Eventually though the abuse he was receiving at his parents hands began to take a more visible toll.
I was in Junior High when Mom met in a grocery store a boy who belonged to the family who had bought our house on Occidental Way and had lived next to the Blodgetts for several years. He said that Mike had become quite retarded, probably owing to the constant beatings he’d endured. When I knew him, Mike was not what you’d call brilliant but he was certainly very aware and surprisingly happy in spite of the way in which he had to live. All in all he was quite "Normal" in Mom’s sense of that word.
Probably the saddest story in the Blodgett family was that of Tommy, their youngest. Rose and Bob had begged my parents to adopt Mike when he was a baby. When Rose became pregnant a fourth time, she started taking all sorts of medications and Heaven knows what else in an effort to loose the baby. Tom was born sickly suffering from congenital brain damage and I don’t know how many other handicaps.
I never got very well acquainted with Tommy, since he was still pretty much a toddler when we moved into town. I knew though that he had trouble holding his head up and he never did walk very well. Sickly as Tom was, he didn’t escape the abuse.
Mom saw Bob, while in a rage over something, kick Tom in the stomach while the baby was playing on the floor. (evidently he was in the way.) Tom flew clear across the room.
I first learned what a switchblade was at about age Five, listening to Mom and Dad talk about how Bob pulled one on his wife one night in the car because she criticized his driving. Rose leapt out of the car and escaped by running through pitch-dark woods, of which there was quite a lot around Seattle’s outskirts in those days.
Another time Bob tried to shoot Rose and she survived by grabbing his arm and making the bullets go wild until the rifle was empty. On still another occasion Bob tried to get his son Stacey to kill her. "You know where my guns are Stace’. Don’t let her push you around like that. Go get a gun and kill her. You’re just a kid. They can’t do anything to You."
Sometimes after one of these incidents Rose would call the Mormon Church. A couple of the elders would come out, give Bob hell and the coffee, cigarettes and beer would go in the garbage for a month or so.
It’s somewhat of a puzzle to me that Mom and Dad would let me have anything at all to do with that family let alone be babysat there. I was frankly confused about these stories, especially about Bob because he’d never been mean to me. I’d gone on outings with the Blodgetts and they had bought me things, come to my birthday parties and welcomed me in their home any time I came over. Bob pulled a piece of Bazooka Bubble gum apart for me so Mike and I could share it. That proved he couldn’t be all that bad because pulling apart bubble gum was Hard Work.
Bob knocked on the car door one evening when Mom had left me parked in a store parking lot, wanting me to get out and drive off with him, "just to play a joke on your mother." I couldn’t see all that well and didn’t recognize Bob. I didn’t go with him however, thank goodness and the police got involved before we found out who had tried to play this little joke. I don’t recall anything happening to Bob except Mom called him a stupid bastard.
Rose was a creative person, always doing murals and other art projects. There was a picture made from pieces of colored Easter egg shell, glued on paper. Rose actually came over to my house when nobody else was home and talked just to me. We sat at the kitchen table together just like Mom and her would, talking like big people and making playdough animals.
When Rose threatened to leave Bob, he said his brothers would come into court with him and swear they’d all slept with her and she’d lose her kids. Eventually though, Rose found herself an attorney who let her know what her rights were and I guess she began to get some of her own back. They divorced I believe, about the time I was nine or ten.
As I implied, Rose watched me for a while when Mom was returning to work. I don’t remember much about the experience except that I didn’t like her food much, but I didn’t like food much generally. Fairly soon Mom made other daycare arrangements for me and to explain them properly I need to go all the way back again to World War II.
When Mom and her first husband Keith had first lived in Seattle they rented one of a row of apartments which had originally been horse stalls. Housing was at a premium in those days and any thing which could be made to serve, was. Mom could stay in bed and flip the toast on the kitchen stove.
On one side of Mom and Keith’s apartment lived Melvin, (Red) and Bertha Magnus. On the other side lived Ruth and Bill Johnson. If any of these neighbors had been different, so to, to a marked degree, would have been my life.
The Magnuses were of Finnish descent, second generation and from North Dakota. They were strong Lutherans. Mel was a carpenter, I suppose. He worked at Boeing in a division called Mockup. Full-scale models of planes were built of wood, which was cheap and plentiful in the Northwest.
It’s amusing sometimes to listen to people making fun of Howard Hughes and his infamous Spruce Goose. He undertook this project because other aircraft materials were in short supply at the time. Spruce has two-thirds the tensile strength of steel. PT boats were made of plywood, as were the fighters in the battle of Britain. The blades in high-velocity wind tunnels were made of wood, which could be easily sanded and rebalanced.
It was sort of that way with Mockup. A wooden model could be more easily modified or entirely rebuilt than one made in steel or aluminum. The wooden model would change shape as the prototype moved through the design process. Mel Magnus was very good at this kind of work. I heard women say that Mel would work on a house one day then come back the next day, take it all apart again and start over. The Magnus’s house was Always changing!
Bertha was a very sturdy, mild-mannered lady who loved being a mom but never managed to bear a child of her own. Bertha and Mel eventually adopted three children, Marilyn, Jim and Mary.
Ruth Johnson, (originally McNeal, came from Montana. A place called Lehi if I remember correctly. She was raised on a farm in a family of mostly girls. That meant that Ruth learned to do a lot of things growing up. I think she was in her forties when I first knew her. Ruth and Bill were definitely products of The Depression. Unlike my parents, The Johnsons were already grown up in 1929. Ruth told about one day she looked in her cupboard and found nothing but some dried corn. She ground it up and made little cakes for her and Bill’s supper. (Of course, there were plenty of people in those days that couldn’t even find corn in their cupboard some times.)
Ruth’s experiences with poverty never left her. She saved Everything; coffee cans, her son’s baby teeth, cigarette coupons, money off clippings from the paper, green stamps, sacks, boxes, cotton from medicine bottles and Easter candy a dozen years old. She knew how to make cake without sugar, eggs or baking powder.
Ruth never went to college but read avidly from two or three encyclopedias and kept a Webster’s unabridged dictionary next to her coffee cup. She subscribed to National Geographic and Life and sent away for booklets, brochures and project instructions from government agencies, science shows on TV and nature-oriented organizations. I think she was the only woman I ever met until about age 15, who had read a book about the atomic bomb. She also read books about dinosaurs, the ocean, deserts of the world, the Presidency of John Adams to name a few, as well as a collection of classics and just plain for fun books.
Ruth questioned parts of the Bible at a time when hardly anybody did that aloud in polite society and she was definitely polite. She let her son play with a doll (among many other things.) She told me once that when Ronnie was very young, maybe four or five, she had, and at his request, made him a skirt to wear while helping her with housework. It just seemed to Ron at the time that since his mother wore a skirt and he was assisting her, he should be dressed the same. This phase passed quickly enough evidently because I can’t remember Ron, who was seven years my senior, ever wearing anything the least bit feminine, though in many ways he was a very gentle fellow.
Ruth kept a very grumpy Calico called Sneezer who provided me with most of my childhood pets. Ruth never went to Church much that I know of except perhaps for the odd confirmation, her closest friends being staunch Lutherans, but she was very active with the Baptist Ladies’ Aid Society. I found out after I grew up, that for many years she’d had a close male friend who was homosexual. A good deal in her style of speech and folksy wisdom reminded me of the singer Burl Ives. Ruth was the thriftiest person I ever met and one of the most generous.
Like Bertha Magnus, Ruth was also unable to have children, (though I have trouble referring to either of these women as Barren.) I don’t know Bertha’s situation regarding pregnancy, but Ruth’s resulted from an earlier and abusive marriage. Many years before we knew her, Ruth had gone into the hospital for something evidently unrelated to reproduction. Her first husband bribed the doctor to perform a tubal ligation on Ruth while she was under anesthetic and without her knowledge. I don’t know if that was the specific reason that she finally divorced him. It may well have been for Ruth loved children to a fault.
As gentle and soft spoken as Ruth was, Bill was gruff sounding and hectoring. Underneath though, at least so far as kids were concerned, Bill was warm and generous. Bill wasn’t afraid also to put in a word or two now and then, of constructive criticism, which though feeling unpleasant at the time perhaps, could be very useful in the long run. Bill was born in the Everett area I think, which is somewhat to the north of Seattle. He recalled a time when Fort Defiance, near Tacoma, somewhat to the south, was still garrisoned by saber carrying Horse soldiers. When Bill was about 14, he found a genuine Indian dugout canoe and used to paddle it from what is now downtown Seattle, over to Mercer Island which is in Lake Washington and is now a haven for the salary-advantaged.
Bill told me that his first job when he was ten or so, was to run ahead of horse teams, carrying a big swab and two cans of grease. He lubricated the wooden tracks along which saw logs were hauled to the mill. (In Seattle Skid Row or Skid Road meant precisely that and not all that long ago, too.)
By the time I knew Bill he was a machinist. He’d worked for many years at Markey Machinery out in Des Moines which is a southern Seattle suburb. When I was doing job development work around 1990, Markey was still there. Bill was skilled as a woodworker as well as with sheet metal and welding. He fabricated the parts for several beautiful water fountains designed by Seattle artist George Sutakowa. One of these graces the downtown Seattle Public Library.
Bill was one of three boys in a Swedish family, a couple of generations from the Old Country. His older brother was an artist and evidently of a rather sensitive temperament. The family put all available resources into sending that brother to university, something which made Bill quite jealous of college-educated people.
Bill had half of his left thumb missing, the result of a machining accident and like Dad, he was quite hard of hearing, in his case from prolonged exposure to intense noise at work. Bill was always glad to have a kid tag along after him to garage, garden or greenhouse. He could always find a handful of nails, a spare hammer and a few scraps of wood from which one could cobble together whatever the imagination could substantiate.
Unlike Ruth who never insulted people and offered criticism only with lavish use of qualifiers and caveats, Bill was loud and critical, if generally in a playful manner. He was hyperopinionated with adults, never said Negro or Black Person and shouted down anybody who disagreed with him. Through all the years I was growing up though, I knew that Uncle Bill and Aunt Ruthie were staunchly in my corner, as well as their giant of a son, Ron.
Since Ruth could not conceive, she and Bill adopted the son of Ruth’s niece at birth and raised him as their own and only child. Ron was about the biggest guy I’d seen when I was a little kid and he seemed close enough to a TV character that I looked on him as a sort of hero.
Like his dad, Ronnie knew about tools, wood and metalworking. He also knew about boats, sailing ships, guns, knives, cars, even model telegraphs. He was and is a phenomenal mechanic and welder.
Ronnie started out evidently, as one of the biggest little brats my mother had ever seen. Ruth wouldn’t discipline him save with a gentle tap on the rear and a nearly-whispered, "Ronnie, I’m going to be angry with you." An oft-repeated story in our family described how Uncle Bill had installed a new bathroom door and Ronnie had filled it full of holes by pounding a nail into it withdrawing the nail and pounding it again, dozens or hundreds of time. By the time I knew him though, Ron was generally a very pleasant person and for Mother, a prime example of how Anybody can improve with time!
When Mom began working full time, she made some sort of agreement with Ruth to watch me four days per week. Mondays Dad was up early, having had Sunday night off and could watch me at home. Tuesday through Friday then, Mom took me from my bed out to the car, bundled in a blanket, drove the five minutes or so to the Johnson’s, carried me in and slipped me in beside Ruth in the built-in bunk behind the piano. Bill would long have since left for work, his shift beginning at 5:30.
In time, Ruth and I would agree to get up. We’d rouse Ronnie. I’d dress from the red satchel Mom always packed for me and the three of us would have breakfast before Ronnie left for school. Ronnie and I would race each other getting dressed, with him most generally winning.
What days these were! though I did not know at the time quite how special, since I had little against which to compare them and did not know how fortunate I was. I don’t know how much Ruth actually taught me and how much she just allowed me to learn. There is definitely a difference.
The environment in which Ruth lived seemed to offer fewer restrictions than anywhere else I’d ever been. Bill and Ruth had moved into a basement, dug and poured by themselves and covered over with a leak prone, flat, tarred roof. They always intended to build a house on top of it but after 20 years or so, everybody including the Johnson’s has given up waiting for that to happen. Since Ruth had cement floors, she didn’t mind me writing on them with chalk or even crayon. (Aunt Katherine had a fit when I pulled that stunt on her tiled kitchen floor.)
Ruth never minded diverting things from their normal use in order to provide a little entertainment or even participating in the game herself. She’d play Dale Evans to my Roy Rogers and talk on the other end of my toy phone. She’d give me my milk in a coffee cup so we could have morning coffee together; adding a little extra milk for cream and pantomiming sugar with an empty closed hand.
Sometimes Ruth would cut out cardboard fish from an old cereal box and filling the bathtub, would set me to fishing with a lathe pole, length of string and an open safety pin for a hook. Having secured my catch I’d be presented with tuna from the can into which the fish I’d caught had transformed.
Ruth had a singular way of contriving fun from commonplace items and knickknacks. She’d lay an armchair down on its face so the back was horizontal and suggestive of a cab. This was my truck that Dad and I drove. Apple boxes could become horses. A cardboard box might become a car. A paper shopping sack might become a space suit or a knight’s armor.
Ruth showed me how to decorate the edges of a paper plate to make a frame then create land or water scenes with crayoned skies, earth and water. If it were an earth scene, she’d go out and find little sprigs of greenery for trees, which we’d glue in place and hold down with a jar while they tediously dried sufficiently to take home. She never minded having anything penciled or crayoned on unless it was a piece of furniture or a painted wall. If next fall’s apples resided in boxes with barnyard scenes or pictures of the moon on them then they’d just be all that much nicer to look at.
The reason why these things were so notable it that they were so different from how things were at my house. It wasn’t as if I lacked toys or that I was punished more than other kids my age and at this time but there was always a depressing sense of utilitarianism about our home. If the Plassmans had a coat of arms the motto might well have read What’s The Point!? Why color on that box when you’ve got perfectly good coloring books? If I fill up the bathtub you’re going to take a bath in it. You don’t need your milk in a coffee cup. Milk is served in glasses. There’s no point in me calling myself Dale Evans because I’m not playing with you.
Perhaps the best illustration of the differences between How Ruth and Mother looked at things is summed up poignantly in the issue of The Belt. As mentioned before I was very thin. "If he turns sideways you can’t see him," was often said of me. "He can lay under the clothesline and be in the shade." Consequently I had no hips and couldn’t wear Levi Wranglers like cowboys and other important people did. Therefore I was bought pants that had elastic around the top so they’d stay up or I had to wear red suspenders. My pants had no belt loops and without belt loops it was difficult to wear a belt.
A belt represented everything good and proud and cool about growing up. Ronnie wore a belt. Just about all the men I knew wore a belt, certainly any Western gunman. One morning when I’d at last beaten Ron dressed, he said, threading his belt through the seven loops of his jeans, "You’re not dressed unless you’ve got a belt on." I think no twelve-year-old girl wished more fervently for a training bra than I at age four, wished for a belt.
Ruth took some scraps of material which matched my pants and put belt loops on them, considerately stitching by hand so Mom could remove them more easily if they displeased her. My self esteem skyrocketed! I didn’t care if there was elastic in my waistband or that I had no hips. I was able to wear a belt.
That evening Lois inquired what was the point of wearing a belt with elastic-topped pants. Ruth understood though that there didn’t need to be a practical point to everything. Some things you just did because they felt right.
After my First Grade or so, we had no access to encyclopedias at home because they were holding up my parent’s’ bed. Neither of my parents were stupid and books were of value if found defaced. Still, books in our home could be traded for bricks of equal volume and load bearing capacity.
Ruth was always glad to look up something, read aloud or paraphrase, show something on the map or globe. One educational diversion we shared sometimes was to spin the world globe in Ronnie’s room and I’d point at some interesting patch of color. Ruth would note the region indicated then go look it up in the Book of Knowledge and give me a glimpse of what life was like in that place.
We also planted flowers together, dug for earthworms in the garden, fed Chatterbox the duck, decorated cookies and made bread.
Ruth allowed me to pinch off from her batch enough for four single serving loaves. I’d knead my dough and raise them in juice cans; proudly bringing fresh baked bread home each Tuesday and Thursday in a MJB coffee sack. Of this, my family approved. In my twenties I returned to bread baking. When my daughter wanted to make her own loaf I gave her a portion and she’d form and bake it in can or pie tin.
A huge advantage of being cared for over at the Johnson’s’ was that one had the run of the amazing array of toys played with by Ronnie and now abandoned for even more fascinating things. Ron had models of boats, planes, cars and rockets. He had a multi-barreled dart gun, funny cartoon characters in rubber, a car shaped foam soap dish, and old Halloween masks. He also had a doll, kept in one of his dresser drawers, along with dresses, shoes ,socks, panties and blankets.
Fairly often I’d get out Ronnie’s doll sometimes diapering her with a paper napkin or scrap of cloth, dress her take her in my imaginary car to be babysat at Ruth’s or Bertha’s house. This was just another game, another way to pass the time.
One evening I asked Mom if I could have a doll. I was told rather sharply that dolls were for girls. Perhaps she did some talking over the next day or two with someone because she relented and said that maybe I could have a little boy doll. My feelings were evidently still hurt or maybe I was just embarrassed over the whole doll issue because I cried and said I didn’t want a doll. When Mom asked me what I did want I said "Nothing."
I don’t think that ended my playing with Ron’s doll. I hope not. I do recall playing with dolls at the homes of girl cousins but at home the subject was a closed one.
The Magnus’s house was very different from my own home but also very different from the Johnson’s’ basement dwelling. Though I liked Bertha very well, especially when I was little and I came to respect Melvin more and more as I grew up, it was the Magnus kids who were most important to me, Marilyn who was 9 years my senior will figure into my story a bit later. Mary who was younger was sometimes a playmate but more often tolerated than sought out. Jimmy who was three years older than me was cherished for years as my very best friend.
I can’t recall a time when I didn’t know Jimmy except of course those few fleeting bits of memory to which the Albertsons belong. The first recollection I can find of him was the two of us traipsing through the seemingly huge expanses of the Magnus property, collecting goat poop. Jimmy thought they were fascinating and he pretended that this little plastic doll we’d found was passing the pellets.
As we went from place to place I kept asking if we weren’t in somebody else’s yard yet and Jim would say "No. I’ve got a big back yard."
Mel and Bertha had purchased five acres out in the Des Moines area near to both the Johnson’s and to our home. They had sold two and a half acres to the Lutheran Church and Mel had reputedly built most of the church as well. The property remaining was about half wooded. I don’t suppose you could walk more than a couple of hundred feet in any given direction without coming out into treelessness and civilization but with a child’s imagination to stretch it into proper scale, Jimmy’s woods seemed to go on for miles and there were Wonderful things in there!
Mel Magnus was always building things at home as well as at work. There was a funny story involving Mel and Keith Hackett, Mom’s first husband. Keith leaned against a dividing wall which separated the Magnus’s kitchen from their living room. The wall moved and nearly fell down.
"What the hell is this, Mel?" Keith demanded. "This wall moves!"
Melvin chuckled. "That’s because there’s only four nails holding it up."
"Well, why would anybody do a thing like that?" Keith wanted to know.
"Oh, I haven’t decided if I like it there yet," Mel said. "I’ve sort of been moving it around."
It seemed that every few times I visited Jimmy, and we were over there frequently, there’d be something different about his room.
When he and Mary were small, Mel divided a room horizontally and made two bedrooms of perhaps five-foot clearance each, one on top of the other. Mary had the upper room, reached by a darling set of miniature steps.
A few times I was over there, Jimmy had a big table in his room with a big hole in the center in which a couple of kids could stand and operate his electric train set watching them whiz all around you. For a long time Jimmy had a large walk in closet into which we’d take chairs, flashlights and of course our guns. This was our train car, our hideout, the bunkhouse at the ranch. Sometimes Jimmy had a bunk bed, sometimes two beds in his room. Sometimes there’d be a big built in dresser with a platform on top big enough for us to sit on. Sometimes there’d be new shelves and desk. Sometimes his room would have moved to an entirely different part of the house.
Outside was even more interesting. At the rear of the house on your left as you were going out the back door was an added on wing which contained storage, workshop and a sauna. (Remember the Magnuses were Finnish.) I never took sauna but the place afforded excellent hiding and mischief opportunities. Further back were the woods and meadow. There was the goat, (Mary could not tolerate cow’s milk when a baby.) There were also various shacks and other structures of differing designs and purposes and all of them wonderful.
It seemed that everywhere you went was lovely junk, building materials and opportunity for adventure. There was an old, brown Studebaker parked somewhere out back, on which we were welcome to climb and play. There was also an old wheel less sleeping trailer, just big enough for a double bed and not much else, but plenty roomy for two or more little kids looking for a fort.
There was a playhouse proper with glass windows and lace curtains and even a little bed with coverlet. I’m sure the house was built for Marilyn or Mary but Jim and I never scrupled over using it.
There was also a row of rabbit hutches into which we’d climb, putting down newspaper on the floors and pretend we were dwellers in an apartment building. There were always wild Indians, rustlers and sometimes things more supernatural to fight and chase away. There was also, at least once, a real danger which could have cost my life and also those of Jim and Mary.
You could always tell it was Sunday at the Magnus house. As I’ve said in those days our family attended church too, but I think things tended to normalize once we got home again. Over there though, there was a kind of quiet about the place on Sunday. TV programming was generally of the religious sort and children couldn’t play roughly because they still had on their church clothes. The Magnuses were very close to their church and so far as one could tell, lived their religion fully.
Like my parents, Bertha and Mel had taken in a number of foster children for various lengths of time and like me, their own three were adopted. I think my mom and dad got involved with the Lutheran Welfare because of the Magnuses. Bert and Mel were Godparents to Lois and Mom and Dad to Marilyn and Jim.
I was three or four I guess when Melvin decided to take in a troubled adolescent boy who’d evidently had dealings with the law on one or more occasions. Mel’s Christian philosophy told him that if this young man were given understanding and some guidance he could be straightened out and go on to live a normal life. I didn’t hear this story till I was perhaps twenty and I don’t remember the boy in question. A headcount at the Magnus’s revealed him to be missing one night and a call was made to the police.
He was found sometime in the wee hours of the morning, walking along a country lane heading toward some woman’s house. Whether the lady was someone with whom he was acquainted or not I don’t know. As I heard the story he was wearing a pair of men’s pants, too large for him and nothing on underneath. He was evidently playing with himself with one hand and in the other, swinging a heavy wrench on a cord. He apparently intended to break into the woman’s house, bent on rape? robbery? murder? perhaps all three.
When apprehended and questioned he told police that he next intended to seek out Mary, Jimmy and myself and to kill us also. We had loving homes and people who cared about us. He did not. That was the first of three times so far, since my birth, that I have been brushed by death.
I admired Jimmy for so many things and I think I was angry at him only once or twice. I remember occasionally kissing him on the cheek. I was so glad to see him and think he was nearly as glad to see me.
Jimmy could climb a pole or a rope, shinny up a tree. He learned to use an axe at a young age, could throw a spear or knife and shot with a bow. He seemed incredibly courageous to me because he didn’t even mind going to bed early.
To me, being sent early to bed was just short of a spanking in the way of punishments and it hurt if not worse, then certainly longer. Once when Jimmy was doing something his mother objected to she said "Jim, stop that or go to bed."
"Alright," he said, "I’ll go to bed." And he went!
I think the best memories I have of being with Jimmy belong to another chapter but the expectation of any time spent in his company being pleasant and most likely exciting, was well implanted in my system of steadfast beliefs as far back as I have memories of him.
The Magnus’s youngest child, Mary seemed from the beginning to have some rather unusual problems. Looking back she probably acted like someone having that ever so popular these days, diagnosis of A.D.H.D. She seemed stubborn, willful and fairly relentless in getting her way. This was coupled with a certain impenetrability. It was difficult to get her to listen and she heard essentially what she wanted to. In time we all realized that Mary suffered from a degree of mental retardation. When I was young however, she seemed a very powerful person. Though younger than me, she was bigger and probably stronger. She seemed to be taking things away from me rather often and was seldom scolded for it. Generally though, Mary seemed to do most of the things that other kids did, if she might be a little slow of speech and need to be told things more often.
I think girls fascinated me a good deal perhaps from the beginning. I don’t know that I had any real sense of the differences between boys and girls. They dressed sometimes in mutually variant fashions. I also had a vague idea that girls grew up to be women and moms while boys grew up to be dads and cowboys and badguys and soldiers. I think I was pretty much up with the pack sexual awareness wise in my age group.
Possibly it was because like many children I spent a lot of time around females, I had some particularly poignant dreams about being included in feminine activities. In one of these dreams, which I must’ve had between four-and-half, and five years of age, I was with three girls I think, in a sort of tent structure like a pavilion at the fair. We had a table and on it was a device rather like a toaster oven, though we didn’t know about them in those days. It made a sort of steaming; chugging sound rather like Mother’s pressure-cooker. The girls had brought along a quantity of bread which we’d loaded into this machine. I had brought three cookies, one white, one brown, one black, which I added to the machine’s contents as they watched. Then the machine was activated and we watched the progress of whatever it was that we were making, through a window in its side.
Perhaps we were making French toast by the loaf or something. I never found out, for suddenly, my Father had appeared and the two of us were standing outside the tent structure, peeing au naturale as on a camping trip or a drive way out in the country.
The symbols in the dream aren’t too hard to decipher. Females together, preparing food in mysterious feminine fashion. I am allowed to join though I am somehow different. Somewhat judgmental male mentor/director draws me out of the feminine closeness into which I have penetrated too deeply. Mentor instructor demonstrates in the clearest manner possible that we are both males. The girl’s eyes were dark and expectant and in the deja vu sense so common to dreaming I felt we’d met before.
I can’t recall the color of my cousin Kaye’s eyes, but they seemed to penetrate. "I’m six," were the first words she said to me. "I’m two years older than you." By this I guess she felt superiority had been established. I rather think she needn’t have troubled herself. I think everything about Kaye was fascinating. Not like Jimmy. I understood him. But everything Kaye did seemed to be somehow unexpected and charming.
The year after Mom’s father had died; she lived with her aunt Daisy, (she of the bathroom skeleton in Chapter 1,) and Daisy’s husband, Charlie. They had three or four sons and one daughter. Aunt Daisy slung silver knives at her children if they said off-colored or unwelcome things while sitting around the table. She used a cat-of-nine on the backs of the boys and across the legs of the girls. (Daisy had mellowed a good bit by the time I met her evidently because I thought she was wonderful.))
The name of that family branch was Ogden and I can’t recall which of Mom’s parents had married into it. They were, as we said it, "Where’s the hacksaw Mom, I’ve gotta go cut the toilet seat in half. Some of your half assed relations are in town!" Mom didn’t much enjoy living with her rustic cousins who ate pancakes and canned milk most meals with fried potatoes; who had only an outhouse and a thundermug, (chamber pot) which the girls shared at night.
Mom was in the habit of overflowing the latter. She ruined a good deal of the winter potato supply because the root cellar was just under the sleeping space she shared with her cousin Joan.
Mom evidently did walk seven miles to school every day and back again in the deep snow, though I don’t recall her claiming it to be uphill both ways. Even the girls wore long johns under their dresses, probably with long, cotton socks pulled up over.
As previously mentioned this was in the Wenatchee Valley region of central Washington State. This area has long competed with the Yakima Valley, somewhat to the south for the title of Apple Capital of the world.
Chuck was one of the Ogden boys. By the time I met him he’d relocated to Myrtle Creek in Southern Oregon, where he lived with his wife Vina, (pronounced Vine-uh), and his daughters Joyce, (pronounced Joyce) and Kaye, (pronounced Little Princess). Chuck had a farming background from the subsistence and orcharding days of his childhood. He had also been along on sheep drives, like cattle drives but woollier and smellier, where he worked on the (no pun intended,) chuck wagon. Later he became a crane operator.
Chuck was also a well-read person who loved to talk about and trade books. He was the only person I knew who had a real, authentic bowie knife. He lived with his family in a log house on a small ranch/farm. Chuck told me to eat pie and ice cream for breakfast and beans if I couldn’t get that. He also told me that if I ever wanted to grow bigger I’d have to step in lots of cow manure. (Characteristically, I took all of Chuck’s advice at one time or another, once horrifying my mother by locating the deepest pile on the place, another time running her all over Burien looking for cherry pie.)
Vina was a kind, open lady who was always good to us kids, if not quite so flamboyant as her husband. Joyce was a quiet, kindly girl, about the age of my own big sister. Kaye though, was Two Years Older than me as she’s already pointed out, and owned a Horse!
The Ogden house was of an interesting design. There was a ranch-style front porch and front house section with living room, kitchen, dining room, a couple of bedrooms. Kaye’s room was in a sort of loft, which had to be reached by going outside. In the back of the house was a roofed-over but open expanse of deck which was probably intended eventually as a sort of closed-in porch. You’d walk out the back door and find yourself looking directly out into the back yard or pasture, but to your right was the bathroom door. Not an outhouse; there was plumbing. To your left was a flight of stairs leading upward toward the attic and that’s where Kaye had her room.
She took me up there fairly directly once we were introduced, I suppose so the older folks could converse more readily.
Music seemed to be of paramount importance to Kaye just now. She began playing records on her little phonograph and dancing to the tunes. I had no idea what sort of songs these were. I knew about the Chipmunks and Tennessee Ernie Ford and that’s about it. The process was fascinating though. We had a stereo at home but I never used it and this machine was much more accessible and understandable than our own, autochange, radio-phono console monstrosity at home. I began picking out records on the basis of label color or something striking about the jackets they came in. Pretty soon I had Kaye dashing up and down the stairs to ask whether we could play this or that selection belonging to her parents or older sister.
The more Kaye got into the music the more she danced, the faster she twirled and the higher her dress lifted. I’ve related how at age Three I’d been shown the neighborhood girl’s new Easter undies and I don’t think anyone had ever suggested there was anything wrong with that. Naturally enough I started following Kaye around the room trying to see what she had on under her swirling skirts. About the time I glimpsed, Kaye caught me and delivered me a lecture, (those penetrating eyes again,) about how nasty it was to look at girl’s underpants.
Soon after this we were playing with toy horses and saddles and other equipages. While I had some little plastic riding saddles for my horses at home, Kaye had packsaddles with detachable packs, and wagons and watering troughs and a farmhouse and a silo and even little plastic bales of hay!
Her favorite was Packy the Packhorse and I begged Kaye to please let me play with Packy. Kay made voice for all of her animals and she kept presenting me with another horse, without saddle or bridle who repeatedly reared up and said, "I’ll play with you." Finally by directly addressing Packy I won her reluctant consent to play with me for a little while.
Kaye taught me another thing of great importance. One day I asked her in an offhanded way what would happen if I took one of her toys home with me. She said that if I did such a thing she’d tell my parents and she’d also tell Santa. I’d get nothing for Christmas and they’d make me tell The Truth.
From time to time, my sister Lois would stare at me following some mishap or other and yell "I want you to tell me the truth!" I had thought that telling The Truth involved spinning out as elaborate and windy a story as possible and I’ve noticed that lots of other folks, especially some of those in public office have grown up with the same notion. Well, perhaps they also needed Kaye in their lives. Since my own notion of the truth hadn’t worked all that well for me in the past, I said honestly enough "I don’t know what The Truth is."
"You just say you did it!" Kaye responded. In later life I’ve often thought How Lutheran. I’ve mentioned before that I was raised A.L.C. and so was Kaye. The directive to admit guilt before anything specific has actually been done is all too familiar.
As it happened, one of Kaye’s toys did end up in my luggage. Whether Kaye had given it to me or some adult had accidentally added it to my own things I don’t know. I did not steal it. One day when Mike Blodgett was playing with this little, yellow plastic cart, my dad asked me if it belonged to me. I said Yes, but felt in my heart that I had not told The Truth.
Kaye did give me a pair of her white, rubber snow boots for the purpose of stepping more safely into cow piles. They had button and rubber band fasteners and airplanes on the fronts. She warned me about piles which were likely to go higher than my boot tops.
One evening we went to a concert. (I’ve no idea what kind.) I saw Vina changing Kaye’s dress, shielded from view but in the middle of the living room. She put her into something long and black and if I were any judge, very grown-up looking. Black was one of my favorite clothing colors and I thought Kaye looked quite elegant. I think I knew then that I was in love.
In the months intervening till our next visit to Myrtle Creek, I’d have dreams in which I threw my arms around Kaye’s neck, hugging her and she’d say, "You’d better love me so--." Though merely a series of dreams, I imagine they depicted well enough her likely expression of self-satisfaction if I’d dared to tell her how I felt.
Ruth Johnson became rather intrigued I think over my constantly talking about Kaye. She played phone games with me sometimes with her playing Kaye and myself chattering about coyotes attacking the ranch and I was ready with my six-shooter, that sort of thing.
Next time I saw her, Kaye was occupying most of her time drawing pictures of brown doggies with blue eyes. The pictures were done to exacting standards and seemed to be identical. Once she lost her blue crayon and protested that she could no longer draw the eyes for her dogs. Her sister Joyce told her to use purple and Kaye fixed her with that "You’re so Stupid" stare that she’d used on me when I’d admitted not knowing the truth. A number of times I thought about hugging Kaye, but the time just never seemed to be right.
When she was in a very good mood Kaye sometimes let me ride her horse, Beauty I think she was called. This may have been the first time I’d ridden a horse, but I’d dreamed of doing so many times. Since the vision of The West is the vision from horseback, the notion of having my own horse was a primary icon in my life and my fancies for many years.
I’m also going to relate another dream about Kaye because this chapter in many ways is about images. People who are disturbed by the somewhat bizarre or the frankly fetishistic, might skip the next seven paragraphs, but I don’t think we know nearly enough about sexual and gender images held by young children and how these change. I’ll set down what I can remember, about at least one portion of this process and I’ll have more to say later.
DANGEROUS PARAGRAPH Number 1. In this dream which was somewhat reminiscent of the Packy exchange, I was trying to get Kaye’s permission to wear a pair of her underpants. This had, (for the sake of the dream, been an issue on previous occasions.) Present, besides Kaye and myself, were at least two other persons, (female), who agreed that this was a reasonable thing for Kaye to let me do. Present also was a fairly menacing figure, (definitely male), whom I felt I’d met before.
Dangerous Paragraph Number 2. I do not know if previously I’d had dreams in which what was about to be threatened had been also mentioned. AT the time, it seemed that I had. I believed that if I uncovered my body in front of this threatening male figure, he would bite off my penis. I’ve described elsewhere how my dreams were plagued by distorted and disturbing male creatures. This was a prime example. I asked him if he would do such a thing if I took my pants off in order to put on Kaye’s underwear. He said, "I might," in a way that sounded like I Will.
Dangerous Paragraph #3. What happened next was interesting. I’d noted before I suppose that girls who wore dresses could change their drawers without taking anything else off. I don’t know that my dream transformed my trousers into a skirt but somehow things were so arranged that I was able to make the desired transfer without significantly disarranging my clothes.
Dangerpara 4. For the sake of the people still with me, I’ll mention that I’m no Freudian but isn’t this dream a fine example of something Dr. Freud would have loved to recount?!! Sigmund Freud’s explanation of transvestitism or a sustained wish to crossdress in males went something like this. A boy sees somehow that a woman or girl hasn’t got a penis. Maybe somebody cut it off. If it could happen to her, perhaps it could happen to me. Girls are scary to be around because they remind me I could get clipped. Wait a while, I’ll put on some girl’s clothes so I look like she does. I still have my penis don’t I? Now I’m a girl, sort of and nobody cut anything off of me. Therefore, as long as I put on girl’s clothes part of the time I don’t have to worry about losing my penis and girls don’t seem to be so scary either.
Dangerpara #5 This bit of theory has never been very satisfying to me. It isn’t that I can’t accept castration anxiety in young males or even older ones. I think this is often a factor in a young boy’s life, if possibly subconscious. It just seems awfully circular. I think the fear of losing one’s penis or testicles has more to do with a general fear of femininity rather than the specific fear of the amputation mentioned. Taking onto oneself a feminine persona, however fleetingly would seem to be a poor cure for such a malady. It would be a lot like curing a fear of shark attack by dressing up like a seaperch say, and swimming in the ocean. While there is a technique for dealing with unfounded fears, called "flooding" in which something like this takes place, I don’t think that’s what Dr. Freud had in mind.
DP6. I think another theory is a lot more valid generally, in treating with the question of why some males wish to dress as females and with my own dream dilemma in particular. The kernel of the idea, and it’s been around a while, is that crossdressing is seen by practitioners as a way of temporarily escaping the heavily competitive world of men and joining, at least in spirit, a gentler, less competition-ridden feminine world. In truth, I hadn’t really dealt very much at this time with the competitive masculine world and those of us who’ve spent a lot of time around women know how competitive feminine society can be. I think however I believed there to be a harshly masculine world out there. TV showed me anachronistic views of it every day. In my breadbaking dream I’d been accepted somewhat into female grouping, only to be removed from it and implicitly reprimanded by a male figure, my father. In this more challenging dream I have, by allying myself with female persons and female ways of doing things transcended the need to abide by male rules.
DP7 At this time I did have a great deal of curiosity about girl’s and women’s underclothes. I had asked Jimmy and others, what it would feel like to wear girl’s underwear. The response I got was "the same as it does to wear what you have on." I suspected though that panties would be somehow cooler to wear and I think I was conscious of being overheated a fair amount of the time. One morning, on a Monday, when I was home with Dad I was in Lois’s room for some reason, while she was at school. Her room was heated independently since the room had been added on at the time I was adopted. The heater was turned off currently. A pair of her white nylon underpants were lying on the floor and I touched them. Not too surprisingly, they were cold. I’m quite sure though that this occurred after the two dreams previously mentioned and my scolding from Kaye.
Welcome Back! One need not have read the aforegoing to understand that dreams were a powerful force in my life at this time and later as well. This was partly because I didn’t understand what a dream was. I thought dreams were real and until about age Seven or Eight, talked about them as if they were. When during the dark hours, certain of my toys would animate or the spaces between the bars of my six-year-old crib open up like little doors, I could only assume that this was really happening. Even for adults, the knowledge that nightmares aren’t Real is small comfort if she or he is afraid of having other nightmares. Dreams are subjectively real in most cases while they are occurring.
When I tried to discuss with my elders the occurrences in my darkened room the night previous, it was no consolation to be told that I must have been dreaming. Like The Truth, Dreaming was something for which I had no definition.