home Bio Art
Biographical works, cont.
home Bio Art
Those stairs to the basement provided a reoccurring nightmare in my early years. The furnace itself was huge to a small child, with the ducts soaring overhead, a giant Hydra. The heavy cast iron door to the fire box, with the steel embossed designs, fancily lettered name of an iron works in Ohio, and the lift handle, a spiral ornament. And inside. The fiery furnace I associated with the Bible story my Aunt Willie, (Boo) read to me about Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, from the book of Daniel. This was before I had to make terms with the furnace, and fill the coal hopper each night all winter.Education. Books force fed.
But the dream. Always ending a dream cycle, just before waking in confusion and fear. Descending those steps on some mission or other, I would inevitably start feeling the pull of the the furnace itself which slowly became soft and rubbery, completely plastic and folding, pulling me into and smothering me in its soft encirclement. The feeling was one of being engulfed or constricted slowly by a huge snake like machine. I knew that if I went too far, I would never return, but the feeling was rather delicious, sexual even. Quick rubber. No fire, though, like in summer. Horrible and thrilling at the same time. I would awake alarmed and frightened. I later read about epilepsy, and the fearful ecstasy that accompanies the seizure in those that have that strange electric decease. Dostoevsty must describe it best in The Idiot. Black holes, it may have predicted, or, the collective unconscience being as inventive/recognitive as it is, would be more apt. Black holes had not been identified that I knew of at that time. But, a half century later, when I first read an account of what a black hole seemed to be, from which nothing escaped, not even light, and the slow descending disk into that diabolical hell, of all matter unlucky enough to be close by, I understood, intuiting from the dream.Returning to the womb, a pervasive unconscience yearning to re-enter the warm swimmy fluid, in the heart pumping ambience of that phenomina, Mother. Hardly weaned, and not completly sucessful at such, that pulling, that engulphment, that flow backwards to the origin of my existance....The floating feeling, or flying, later ended is some sort of wet dream orgasm, as reported in "Sex Begins".. Maybe the nightmare was a prefiguring of puberty, and the onset of sexuality.
WHEN my grandparents were still living, part of the basement was the laundry. There were two huge zinc sinks in a separate room next to the coal bin in which was the laundry. There was a toilet that always smelled funny, for the servants, in a raised area two steps up from the floor, raised like the sinks for drainage purposes. A little "jacket" coal fired stove served to heat the water for the operation, and, I think, for the rest of the house in warm weather. The furnace itself provided hot water in winter. I remember when the first gas hot water heater was installed. The laundry was washed by hand with the help of a wash board, in the big sinks, hung outside to dry and then ironed in the big basement room. I remember well this skinny woman named Etta, who smoked in the vent less bathroom, had a golden tooth, and was described as a "high yellow". She had freckles, and was said to have Indian as well as African blood. "Indian" always meant American. It was said that she had an abusive husband, who would bend her over the window sill, lower the sash so she could not move, and paddle her. I never saw her sit down. My grandmother, who told this story, thought it funny. She had a rather sadistic sense of humor when analyzing the character and lives of other people. I must have gotten that trait from her. Oh, the long afternoons of endless ironing. She was also the baby sitter. I think I was easy to baby-sit. All an adult had to do was talk. I was fascinated by stories, and would give rapt attention to anything verbal that transpired. My memory includes so much of these this stuff, I write it now in old age, for mind relief.This larger basement room had high windows and became a green house of sorts in winter, when, as the seasons changed, heavy tubs and planters of ferns were moved to and from the front porch, with great effort and ceremony, and placed on stepped benches under the windows. Long after the days when the ferns were no longer part of the decor, the maids a distant memory, I set up my electric train on a plywood 4x8, and had fun attempting an alpine village with mountains and tunnel made with plaster of Paris. I got a chemistry set for Christmas one year, and preceded to make foul smelling concoctions, for which I promptly got my ass beat, as it was called. At one point I became an inventor, using motors of all scrounged sorts, including a clock, to animate spindly machines of no practical value. Experiments and hobbies I ran through like crazy. Piano playing, gardening, tropical fish, drawing and painting, from as long as I can remember.
The basement was an area of fear for Mom's sisters, growing up just after the house was built. Non, as a young woman, would tell the misbehaving Bobu and Ibel that there were bears under the house. And if they did not mind, the bears would attack!!! Aunt Ellen, a nervous individual, not to say neurotic, claimed to have had convulsions of fear, and nighmares because of this.
Later, after the war ended, Uncle Jack was making a killing in the insectoside buisness. He had a degree in chemical engineering from UNC, and had served in the Army, at one point being assigned to Bogata, Columbia. One of the new chemicals being used at that time was DDT, a powerful substance for the control of just about any insect you could think of. Jack was amazing. He let mosquitos bite him!!! He told us that when they bit, hold your breath, and they could not escape, and the venom would not sting!!!! We had about a million mosquitoes around all the time. But soon, the danger of the chemical became known, and his business was ruined with a ban on the sale of DDT. We had a lot of it he gave us in the basement. One time, some cake was left down their, for some reason, and had gotten sprayed by the stuff. My cousin Skipper was there, three years younger than I was, and he ate some of that cake. Aunt Ibel and Mom found out and tore into a fit, gave him epicack to induce vomit. I almost ate some too!!! Do not know what stopped me. BUT the fact that he ate it was amazing: Skip as a child, would hardly eat anything at all. I remember the frustration of it all, Ibel trying to spoon portions of spinich through those tight lips, singing the Popeye song: "I fight to the finish,/ cause I eat my Spinich". Uncle Cris was in the US Navy, serving in the Pacific. All quite secret and hush hush, because of security concerns. He could never tell poor Ibel where he was or what he was doing. Such were those days of war.Going to Lenoir as Alies invade Europe: More Bio.