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Legendary Tales
written by Gazette Publisher Tom Thomson
Email Tom Thomson at publisher@shortnorth.com

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OCTOBER 2006

Back to the past. Back to the glory days when we were all kids. Back to the days when a nickel bought a candy bar, or a cherry coke, or a telephone call, or a streetcar ride. I’m talking the late ‘30s, the early ‘40s.

Oh, I know the world was a mess back then, but when has it not been? Hitler was ranting and raving, and guess what? He had his share of supporters in this country – including right here in Ohio.

I guess when you’re a kid you just accept things the way they are, no matter how crazy and mixed up.

You’re born into a rich family or a poor one. You have brothers and sisters, or you have none. Most of us inherit our religion and our politics from our parents.

All that being said, there I was, a 16-year-old kid, wet behind the ears. Let’s say the year is 1940. I’m trying to get passing grades in school. I graduated from Everett Junior High, and now I’m in my first year at North High School.
Sometimes I have a paper route, sometimes I don’t.

My family has recently moved again; this time to 61 West 11th Ave. – a lot closer to High Street, and still across the road from the sprawling OSU campus. The white frame house we now live in had once been the home of John Schaeffer, a noted Ohio botanist. There were a number of advantages to our move. For one thing, it was close to the streetcar line that I took to school.

But wait a minute! Just hold on! They say that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, and so far I haven’t mentioned many of the good times that were to be had. Just because it was during the Great Depression and my family was on the poor side doesn’t mean kids like me didn’t have any fun. Maybe more fun than kids today have. Maybe because the good times weren’t handed to us on a silver platter.

Television was still in the future, but we had radio. There were shows for kids like “Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy” and popular shows for everyone like “The Shadow” featuring the mysterious Lamont Cranston.

Several local stations that were affiliated with networks carried programs that the entire family could enjoy. Shows like “Amos ‘n’ Andy” and “Lum and Abner.” There were also plenty of comedians on radio back then. Some of the programs were hour-long extravaganzas starring big names like Bob Hope and Red Skelton. Local disc jockeys kept us supplied with plenty of good music – bands like Glenn Miller, Kay Kyser, and Tommy Dorsey.

Give or take a few years, some of the local jocks that I remember were Erwin Johnson “the Early Worm,” Doc Lemmon, and Spook Beckman.

Those were the days!

SEPTEMBER 2006

Summer has many moods, many voices. As a rule, I like them all. Summer can beget little breezes that whisper in your ear like a lover; it can cannonade with the flashing of big guns and the booming of thunder, it can croon a lullaby like a mother robin.

Or, it can look kindly on a baby deer.

The one I am thinking about was standing smack in the middle of a dirt and sandstone road in Hocking County.

When driving on such hill country roads, I usually loiter along, frequently stopping. I get out of the car a lot, listen to the chorus of birdsong, try to identify a few wildflowers. This particular day, I had already done all of these pleasant things.
I was headed back to the crowded city, driving faster than usual, surrendering probably to the sirens’ admonishments that lure us back to the dubious quickstep of the hive.

I didn’t see the little fawn (for that is what a baby deer is called) until I was almost on top of him. Perhaps his handsome colors had blended in with the dappled sunlight filtering through oaks and sycamores onto the road.

Also, he was very small, about as tall as a yardstick set on end. He must have stood there not knowing what to do, his little matchstick legs propped wide apart, as he watched my car bear down on him. I still hadn’t seen him.

The sound of my approaching car should have alerted him, but it didn’t. He was obviously so young that his parents hadn’t had a chance to teach him about the dangers of this world. Either that, or he hadn’t listened.

From the very beginning, the contest was unfair. He was so little and my car was so huge.

When I first spotted him he was about four car lengths away. I hit the brakes and my car skidded on the loose gravel, then spun halfway around in a cloud of dust. When I finally stopped, the baby deer was one car length away.

He turned a bit sideways, as though to brace himself against the impending disaster. But he stood his ground.

I don’t know whether he was frozen with fright, or just totally unaware of the peril he had been in. I suspected the latter, but changed my mind when I saw that he was trembling all over.

After such a rude introduction, I am sure neither one of us knew exactly what was the proper thing to do. So, for about a minute, we didn’t do anything. I think we both needed a little more time to gather our composure.

With a great sigh of relief, I continued to look out the car window at him. He, in turn, looked back at me with his big unblinking amber-brown eyes. His coat was the color of buckwheat honey, decorated with irregular spots of white along the flanks.

About this time, I became aware of the doe (his mother) when I heard her soft barking and bleating. She was only a few yards away, secluded in tall grasses and blackberry tangles, difficult to see because of her subtle coloring and the flickering patterns of tree shadows.

Her eyes were fixed on the little scene in the middle of the road. I believe she was trying to tell her tiny offspring what to do, but I don’t think her message was getting completely through.

He seemed to have gotten over the shakes, and he was making tentative moves to escape his predicament. He just didn’t know what to do first.

Evidently thinking that discretion might be the better part of valor, he scampered about in a little circle. Then, when he should have been looking at his mother, he would stop and look at me. Moments later, he would back up a few steps, then dance forward again. Every now and then his knees would buckle.

Finally, mustering all his courage, he ran right by the side of the car, teetered down the road a short distance, then darted into the brush and disappeared. That was the last I saw of him.

About then, off in a nearby meadow, I saw another adult deer, then another, and another. They stood with ears alert, then suddenly raced away, their graceful bodies arching over the ground, snow-white tails bobbing up and down.

As I started up the car, a multitude of thoughts were passing through my mind. The most important one was that in a time when indifference and death are so casually accepted, somehow – luckily – I had contributed to life.

AUGUST 2006

Many of you probably remember that great film Trains, Planes, and Automobiles starring John Candy and Steve Martin.

Well, let me tell you a little story about some neighborhood kids that might be titled Streetcars, Planes, and Automobiles.

On dog day afternoons, there we would be – two or three of us neighborhood kids hangin’ out on someone’s front porch steps. The time: mid ‘30s, smack-dab in the middle of the Great Depression. The place: Columbus, near the Ohio State University campus, usually someplace along Neil Avenue or on West Tenth or Eleventh Avenue.

Most of us went to Ninth Avenue Elementary School – long since torn down – but not all of us.

I’m talking about kids like Rex Blair, Johnny Gardner, Bob Kerns, and Bill Baumgardner. Bob went to a Catholic school, and I believe Bill went to Everett Junior High.

Sometimes there were others: Jimmy McVicker, for instance. Jimmy went to University School.

There were always quite a few cars passing by in one direction or another, especially on Neil Avenue, plus an occasional streetcar, and sometimes we would make a game of trying to identify the cars.

One or another of us would shout something like, “Packard!” – and the games would begin.

The occupants of that elegant car with the stylish and unforgettable radiator grill would pass by unaware that they had just made someone’s day.

There’s no doubt in my mind that most of the cars back then were easier to tell apart than the cars today. The sleek, streamlined Studebaker, for instance.

Or the swanky Buick convertible.

Some of the cars that drove by actually had rumbleseats. In case you don’t know what a rumbleseat is, or was. I have no idea whether such things still exist. They were usually found on coups at the rear, which opened up into a seat. It was just like the trunk of a car opening up on top.

I never rode in one, but I can imagine the joy of having the wind blow through your hair as you tootled down the street.

Not many of us around now who remember those sporty little jobs. Nash, Hudson, DeSoto – gone now. Most of those old cars, classics now, are just relics on memory lane.

Back to the dog day afternoons.

Sometimes our attention was drawn to the noise of an airplane passing overhead.

We would play the same game and try to identify it. This would prove to be a lot easier.

Frequently it would be a Ford Tri-motor, all silvery and shiny, coming from or going to Port Columbus.

A couple of times a week we would get a real thrill by spotting a Curtis Condor, a strange-looking big bi-plane.
If you let your imagination go, I swear they looked like some kind of prehistoric dinosaur with wings.

The Neil Avenue streetcars were more mundane but still attractive, what with their bright yellow and orange colors.

The end of the line was at West Eleventh Avenue – at the very gates of the university.

At first there was a motorman up front and a conductor toward the rear. Later they redesigned the cars so that the motorman ran the whole show.

Adults could buy a strip of six little green tickets for the paltry sum of 25 cents. Children under 6 paid 3 cents. I think I was almost 10 years old before my mother quit insisting I was a 6 year old.

Well. That’s about it.

I didn’t have enough time to tell you about Big Little Books®, the Shadow, and the excitement of radio shows in the ‘30s!

Maybe next time.

JULY 2006

Tough Years – 1934, 1935, 1936. The heart of the Great Depression. A severe drought in much of the nation. The Dust Bowl out West gave birth to John Steinbeck’s Okies and The Grapes of Wrath.

In the best neighborhoods of Columbus you could rent a house for $30 or $40 a month – or buy it for $2,000 or $3,000!

The problem was no one had any money. People were working for peanuts – if they were lucky enough to have a job. Twenty-five or 30 cents an hour was not unusual. But I was just a kid selling magazines. What did I know?

I had heard of children from well-to-do families getting allowances, but not this kid. If I wanted any spending money, I had to earn it!

I was a preteen, like I said, selling magazines after school and on weekends. My widowed mother, my brother and I lived in an apartment on the corner of West 11th and Neil Avenue. As I mentioned before, the building is still standing.
A couple of retail shops, a deli and a florist were on the ground level. Immediately next door was the Varsity Drug Store owned and operated by the Cummings family.

It occupied a cavernous space and included a long soda fountain that featured all kinds of goodies – including toasted pecan rolls for 4 cents each. I can still picture Mr. Cummings, tall and thin with a thatch of white hair and a neat little mustache, also white.

A couple of rooming houses were next door to Varsity Drugs, then Neil Hall. Maybe another rooming house, then the Campus Neil Restaurant and, finally, the Campus Neil Drug Store. That was the end of the commercial district. The Campus Neil Restaurant had exceptionally good food and was one of my mother’s favorite places to treat my brother and me to Sunday dinner.

Oops! I forgot to mention the Palm Grill behind where we lived. It was a small bar frequented by students and occasional faculty, owned by Mr. Warren, a heavyset man who was also enrolled in the OSU Dental School. You may recall that it was out back, between our little yard and the Palm Grill, where the scene of the famous boxing match I engaged in with Jimmy McVicker was held, a story recounted in one of my previous articles. This little bar, the Palm Grill, is not to be confused with the Palm Gardens, a nightclub that was located on High Street about where the Kroger store is.

From where we lived, it was four or five blocks over to High Street – quite a distance for a kid if you stop and think about it, and it wasn’t until a couple of years later when we moved into a house on West 11th Avenue that I dared venture that far, and boy did I start learning a few things about life.

Okay. I’ve given you some idea of what the neighborhood was like back then and how I earned my spending money.

But, as they say, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Not to worry. My mother didn’t have enough money to buy me a bike, but there were plenty of other kids’ bikes to ride. Not only that, I had plenty of roller skates – and was I ever a daredevil!

A lot of times on dog day afternoons, we would sit on somebody’s porch steps and try to identify the makes of passing automobiles. It was actually a lot easier back then because things were less complicated.

JUNE 2006

Back to the past. The dismal days of the Great Depression – but I was young. The events I’m going to tell you occurred when I was about 10 or 11 years old. Bright years of discovery. Discovery of self. Discovery of the world.

It was especially exciting for a kid like me because I was lucky enough to live right across the street from an institution of higher learning. You guessed right, Ohio State University.

During the years I speak of, the campus was my front yard. My mother, my brother and I lived in an apartment at 1628 Neil Ave. The apartment building is still there.

Those years represented a period when our mother wasn’t renting a large house in order to take in roomers for income. The apartment rent was reasonable, about $30 a month. To make ends meet, she might have been drawing on a meager savings account – whatever.

She managed to keep a lot of healthy, wholesome food on the table. Unfortunately, no junk food, no soft drinks, and very few sweets.

Aaaghh!

A big problem for a kid my age. The solution? Get off the seat of my pants and get a job when I wasn’t in school.

For starters, I became a door-to-door salesman peddling packets of seed from the Lancaster Seed Company.

It was springtime. I should have become a boy millionaire. Instead, I could hardly afford a licorice stick! You may recall my writing in this column before that I delivered the Dispatch when we lived at the Cambridge Arms downtown – even though I was too young to go to a sub-station to pick up papers. Instead, my mother arranged for a Dispatch truck to drop off a roll of papers each day for me.

Now I was still too young to have a regular newspaper route, but I didn’t live in a fancy-dantzy high-rise apartment building like the Cambridge Arms anymore, so, I had to come up with something else. Finally, I came up with it. Selling magazines – the Saturday Evening Post, Colliers, the Ladies’ Home Journal – those kind of national publications.

A district manager would come around once a week, drop off new magazines and collect the money on ones I had sold the previous week.
I had a few regular customers I would deliver to, but most of my income came from street sales – which I liked the best.

I would trot alongside a student or whomever, giving them my best sales spiel. I had a magazine bag slung over a shoulder, at least one magazine in my hands, and the challenge of good in my heart. It was one of the best jobs I ever had. I loved it!

Here’s some more information on what the neighborhood was like back then – demographics, if you will, and I knew them like the back of my hand.

Directly across Neil Avenue from where we lived was Hamilton Hall – that’s where I was wandering around and almost fainted when I encountered a cadaver.

On the northeast corner of Neil Avenue and West Eleventh was Mack Hall. Beyond that was Oxley Hall. East of Mack Hall was Baker Hall.

And, just down the street half a block from where we lived was Neil Hall. All of these handsome old structures were residence halls for women students- coeds, if you please.

Overlooking Mirror Lake, was Pomarine Hall, the women’s natatorium was also the location of a wonderful cafeteria. Many of their delicious specialties still linger in my memory. Fluffy, a flavorful cheese fondue, for instance.

On West Tenth was South Hall, a residence for men graduate students. Most men students either lived in rooming houses, with their parents, or in fraternity or sorority houses – mostly on the east side of High Street.

Few students owned a car, and probably not many faculty members. They took the streetcar or walked.

Times were tough.

MAY 2006

Remember HAL, the rogue computer in Arthur C. Clarke’s great novel 2001: A Space Odyssey? Or maybe you saw Stanley Kubrick’s brilliant movie version of the book. No matter.

Well, I have some bad news for you. Believe it or not, some of Hal’s descendents have invaded my workspace. They are an even more curious cast of characters than their infamous ancestor in that famous story. And, believe it or not, these shady characters inhabit the workspace where “Legendary Tales” is produced each month.

The motley crew I’m talking about are a rowdy bunch of ill-tempered and maladjusted cybernetic kooks. Surefire candidates for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. It’s frightening when one considers that there are countless millions of other such groups in this country and all around the world. Curiously, it seems that no one has previously documented this subculture living in our midst – so I guess it’s up to me.

I realize that I’m walking on a slippery slope, but here goes. First of all, there’s the gang leader – my computer. Actually, on occasion he can be a rather decent fellow. Not that he doesn’t boss everybody around, including me. He lords it over everyone. Intimidating is how I can best describe it. I butter him up by telling him that he is the apple of my eye. A lot of other times (under my breath) I mutter, “Yeah, yeah, Winesap, that’s what you are for sure. Why do I have this distrustful attitude towards him? I have reason to believe he’s a secret drinker. A lush. Why else does he crash at the most crucial times? I hope I don’t sound paranoiac, but I also think he might have Mafia connections.

Oh well, nobody’s perfect. Now, it’s time to briefly meet some other members of the gang.

Meet my printer. My printer is like a little brother to me – a whimpering little sycophant. Not only that, he’s never sure who he is, so I’m always taking him over to the Chooser to reassure him. Next, meet my Surly Girl Scanner. She moans and groans so much on the job she sounds like a whelping sea lion. Next in the lineup is my copy machine. Most of the time he’s a nice obedient little fellow who seldom gives me any trouble. He’s a lot better than the carbon paper some local yokels once compared him to. He’s also a bit of a sycophant, but what else would you expect from a copycat? Finally there’s Max the FAX. An old curmudgeon, he’s like a punch-drunk boxer who doesn’t always respond to the bell. Worse than that, he’s been throwing a lot of fights. What other reason for the spam all over his face? Anyway, he’s just a wannabe, a broken down has-been.

Well, that’s the gang that’s running loose over at my place.

George Orwell, where are you?

APRIL 2006

In the last episode, I shared with you a few of my boyhood consumer purchases. Or, perhaps I should say boyhood consumer needs.

But, let me set the stage. I was 11, 12, 13 or so, and the years I speak of were snack dab in the middle of the Great Depression. The actual years were 1935 through 1937, maybe 1938.

Hitler had weaseled his way into power in Germany and was threatening countries all around him. It was a very nervous time.

A few years before, as a callow youth, he had applied for a scholarship at an art school in Vienna and been turned down.

What a shame!

In Columbus, Ohio, there was one skyscraper, the A.I.U. Building, better known today as the LeVeque Tower, at 50 West Broad St., like a pubescent phallic symbol rising up out of Thurberland.

Bright orange and yellow streetcars rocked and rolled all over town. The Neil Ave. line ended at Eleventh Ave., and I can still hear the motorman or the conductor walking through the car slamming the seats into their new positions while the other one reversed the trolleys.

A strip of six little green tickets cost a quarter. Individual cash fares were six cents. Kids rode for three cents.

Out at Redbird Stadium, Enos Slaughter was hitting homeruns before he went to New York. And, in what was billed as the game of the century, the 1936 OSU football team was defeated by Notre Dame in the last minute of play.

They say that the disappointed Buckeye fans were so unnerved that some of them haven’t recovered to this day.

James Thurber was ensconced in New York City writing some very witty books.

There were a lot of other talented American writers coming into their own: Thomas Wolfe, Ernest Hemmingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and John Steinbeck, just to name a few of the prominent ones.

Out West there was a severe drought that created a Dust Bowl, the subject of some of Steinbeck’s stories.

Ominous times.

Not too unlike the ones we are living in.

But the hearts and souls of children remain remarkably carefree even in the most troublesome of times.

MARCH 2006

It was darn hard for a kid like me to make a living during the Great Depression. Jobs were difficult to find even for veterans who marched on Washington, while many others were selling apples on street corners.

Gangsters like Al Capone, John Dillinger, and Baby-faced Nelson were terrorizing the Midwest. Tuition at Ohio State University was around $30 a quarter.

I was fortunate in that I can’t remember a time when I didn’t have a part-time job after school or during the summertime. After all, there were necessities in my life that required ready cash, above and beyond what I could expect from my struggling widowed mother, confections like hot fudge sundaes, sodas, and milkshakes, for example.

There was an Isley’s store on High Street that had sky-high ice cream cones. The clerks used long slender scoops that lent a distinctive shape to the ice cream that towered before the eyes of every kid that went into their store. And, I’ve already spoken of the Yummy Man that rode his bike through our neighborhood.

And, candy! Penny candy like Mrs. Veech used to sell in the little room at the back of her house across from the Ninth Avenue Elementary School, and there was also the confectionary at the corner of Eighth Avenue and Highland.

So many different treats to choose from: Tootsie Rolls, Green Leaves, Coconut Flags, and Life Savers are some of the ones that come to mind. And regular candybars, sometimes three for a dime, and often bigger than their contemporary counterparts. Many are still around: Milky Way, Mounds, Hershey Bars, Mr. Goodbar, Butter-fingers, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.

Go on, tell me that all those sweets weren’t good for me! I was lucky, though. I didn’t gain a lot of weight and my teeth held up reasonably well. I guess it boils down to what we all learn as we go through life. There’s a price to pay for every pleasure, but sometimes it’s not in the form you might expect it.

So the extra income from my paper route, grocery bagging, and other odd jobs provided those necessities. I haven’t even mentioned my reading material needs – and I don’t mean school assignments. What I’m talking about are the many pulp magazines that were readily available at Barry’s Drug Store at Tenth and High and the Campus-Neil Drug Store at Tenth and Neil.

These establishments also had soda fountains that dispensed many of the goodies I’ve already mentioned. And, I guess I forgot to list such thirst-quenchers as cherry cokes and phosphates in a rainbow of flavors.

As far as I was concerned, it was pretty close to one-stop shopping.

Second-hand copies of my favorite magazines could be found in many of the little shops that lined High Street between Chittenden and King avenues on the east side of High Street.

I was hooked on many of the magazines all the way back to when I was 11 or 12 years old.

They had titles like The Shadow, Doc Savage, Sky Fighters, and Amazing Stories. I guess I had better not mention the copy of Spicy Detective I hid in a barrel of dishes in the attic.

I don’t dare forget movies. Starting sometime between ages 12 and 14, I became a regular patron of Neff’s State Theatre, which was on High Street in the same building that is now a popular off-campus music hall.

Overnight I became a teenage movie buff. It only cost 20 cents to get in, and there was always a double feature.

The really big films ran Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. A not-so-big film played the rest of the week. These films were evening shows with the exception of the weekend when there was also a matinee. On Saturdays there were usually a pair of Westerns or horror shows.

I remember seeing such classics as Topper, Stage Door, Algiers, and Boy’s Town. The older I got, the more often I was allowed to go.

Every year during football season when there was a homecoming rally, a huge crowd of students would converge at the State Theatre across from the campus. And guess who was sure to be in the crowd?

Well, I’ve rambled on for so long I’ve almost forgotten the point of my story.

Oh, yes, I remember now!

It was why I needed a lot of part-time jobs to maintain my lifestyle!

FEBRUARY 2006

At the risk of boring you to death, I am going to continue my genealogical quest just a bit longer.

Up to now, all of my recollections have focused on my mother’s side of the family – all about my mother, my orbiting grandmother, and my brother, David. Of course, they are the ones I knew best, my immediate family.

The other side, my father’s side, were more or less strangers to me. I hardly knew them at all. They lived in Chicago, and I can’t remember meeting any of them, although they all trekked down for the funeral services at the time of my father’s death when I was four years old.

The funeral was held in my orbiting grandmother’s house in Grandview. Yes, the same house in which I encountered my earth mother not many months later. I wrote about that last month.

Lord, how the memories come tumbling! Anyway, the open casket was placed in front of the living room bay window overlooking Grandview Avenue. I remember I had to climb halfway up the stairs out in the hall so I could see him.

He looked remarkably well I thought, considering he had fallen out of a 10th-story hotel window in Pittsburgh a couple of days before.

A lady, possibly one of the Chicago relatives, came up the stairway where I was perched and gently told me my father was now in heaven. This confused me later when I saw a hearse take his body to Chicago for burial.

My mother never cared very much for my father’s mother. His mother’s maiden name was Bertha Randal, and she was born in a little Texas town near the Arkansas National Wildlife Refuge. As a young girl she was a talented artist, and my family still has one of her oil paintings, a nice still life of a vase of roses.

Her family later moved to Dallas, she married, and that’s where my father, David Drury Thomson, was born. Also my father’s younger brother Henry.

About the time of World War I, they moved to Chicago.

My dad’s father was in the hardware business. Times were booming, so there was plenty of opportunity in the Windy City. Meanwhile, my mother’s family had settled in Nashville, Tennessee, and that’s where my mother was born and raised.

It is said that the wheels of fate grind exceedingly fine. Well, at least when we try to attach our own destiny to them.

So it was about this time, when World War I was winding down, that my mother’s family decided to pull up stakes.

My mom’s dad was a traveling salesman, and where did he see opportunity knocking? Why, Chicago, of course! They eventually moved into an apartment in one of the fashionable neighborhoods around Jackson Park.

My mother took up golf, and some of the earliest pictures I have of her are on the golf course. And in more than one of the old photos she is surrounded by ardent suitors.

I keep forgetting to mention that my mother had a sister. An elder sister named Hazel. She later married, and the couple moved down east where they lived in several cities around New Jersey. The truth is she and my mother didn’t get along all that famously, so my memories of Aunt Hazel are pretty dim.

Funny thing about families, isn’t it? How they don’t get along, I mean.

Back to Chicago. One evening, my mother met my father at a church dance. Shortly after, they were married and the rest is history.

I mentioned that my mother didn’t get along very well with my father’s mother. One amusing little story that’s been handed down over the years might shed some light on the situation.

Shortly after her wedding, my mother accompanied her new mother-in-law, Bertha, into a butcher’s shop. The proprietor beamed at them, and looking at my mother he said, “I don’t think I’ve seen you in my shop before.” Whereupon Bertha chirped, “This is my sister, Lucille.”

And, that’s how wars are started.

My brother was born not much later up there in Chicago and, to tell the truth, he was always partial to that city.

He won a scholarship to the University of Chicago after graduating from the old University School here in Columbus. Well, my always-anxious mother didn’t think David was capable of living up there all by himself attending college, so she put our furniture in storage, packed up, and we all went down to Union Station and boarded a fast train for Chicago, and away we went.

I was eleven years old, in the fifth grade. Needless to say, I was all eyes, ears, knees, and elbows. Off for one of the great adventures of my young life.

And, yes, I did get to know my father’s mother a little better. Mostly, I remember her as powdery, perfumed and plump.

(To be continued)

The Throne

JANUARY 2006

All of this happened many year ago: A few months after the shock of my father’s death, my mother began what would turn out to be one of many household moves that would continue until I finally left home years later.

The first of these moves was to an apartment building not more than three blocks away. There were two bedrooms, a living-dining room, kitchen and bath. David and I shared one bedroom. He had a regular bed; I had a little daybed. Mother had the other bedroom. About half our furniture was put in storage. I was five years old at the time.

Within a few months, we moved to another apartment building in the same block, probably because the rent was cheaper. Da, our orbiting grandmother and Gran, our ailing grandfather, still lived in their spacious home, which was not far away, and I was a frequent visitor.

I was aware that a lot of things were going on in our lives because Mother would explain everything she was doing, even if we didn’t really understand a lot of what she was talking about. Well, maybe my brother David could understand more than I did. But I wasn’t dumb; I usually got the general drift.

One of her major decisions was to get a job so she could hold her small family together. Getting a good job was going to be a case of easier said than done, because she had absolutely no experience in the workplace. The most logical – and the most abundant – kind of job would have been secretarial, but she was devoid of any skills in that direction and showed no inclination to attend a business school.

Her other best bet would have been something in the retail field, but she seemed dead set against that. “Too many hours on my feet,” she would explain. So you can see, finding a job that she felt capable of doing and one that wasn’t below the high standards set by her pride and my grandmother’s advice was going to prove a formidable undertaking.

Another big event the occurred about this time was my grandmother’s decision to sell her house – and this was probably the biggest mistake she ever made, one reason being property values were at a low ebb.

The next thing she did was strike a deal with a couple of painters to paint her house in return for her car. Even at my tender age, I knew this was a dumb deal. I couldn’t believe her getting rid of her really nice car for a stupid paint job. Even though she couldn’t drive, she could always try to learn, I figured.

I’ve seen pictures of my grandmother that were taken when she was 19 or 20 years old. She was an attractive blonde, slender and pretty, and you could tell just by looking at the photographs that she was high-strung and irascible. A blond bombshell, I guess. The same traits she passed on to my mother, even though my mother was a brunette.

Now, I’ll tell you a strange little story that has stuck in my memory over all these years like the memory of a first kiss.

After my grandmother decided to sell her house, she advertised it someplace. Don’t ask me where, probably in the newspapers. At any rate, I was staying with her one day and having a good ol’ time doing not much of anything. Living off the fat of the land, you might say – remember, I was only 5 years old.

My grandmother’s house had an interesting back yard with a cherry tree and a grape arbor, so I was probably playing out there part of the time. Anyway, I remember it was right after we had eaten lunch that a young married couple stopped by to look at the house. They were from out of town and the man was a junior executive with a large insurance company. His wife was about 23 and breathtakingly beautiful of face and figure.

How was I savvy enough to appreciate those qualities at the tender age of five? Don’t ask me. I have no idea how I knew. I just knew. I couldn’t keep my eyes off her. All of her. Her face, her long hair, her slender neck, the swell of her breasts, her shapely behind, her marvelous legs.

Neither had I been exposed to any kind of sexuality of any kind. I had absolutely no idea of the concept of sex. I was totally unaware of sexual gratification of any kind. All of the females I had ever encountered were attractive but in a very subdued way. My mother was attractive, but not at all like this marvelous female who so entranced, charmed, and beguiled me.

Perhaps such an awareness on the part of a young boy is innate, something one is born with, a quality that is transferred genetically from one generation to the next. I don’t know.

However it came to be, I knew I was in the presence of a goddess-queen, a woman so beautiful and desirable that I was transfixed. Like a little shadow, I followed her from room to room as she and her husband inspected the house.

As I look back on this episode, I can see how laughable it is. Me five. In short pants. Mesmerized. My heart stolen away. My eyes soaking up every detail of this beautiful woman’s body, deeply inhaling her perfume, on the verge of swooning!

At one point in their tour of the house, the lady of my dreams excused herself to go to the bathroom. “Oh, my gosh, she’s human!” I thought to myself. “She has to go to the bathroom!”

I posted myself at the bottom of the staircase and watched her as she ascended, my eyes glued to her every motion.

What can I tell you? That’s what I did, and I must have been smart enough that my behavior wasn’t obvious. And I stood my ground. No way was I going to miss a moment of her reappearance and her descent down the steps. To my 5-year-old mind, she was Aphrodite.

Suddenly, I heard the faint flushing of the toilet and a minute later the opening of the bathroom door. Then, there she was!

Down the steps she came, gracefully, and I drank in her delicious beauty, my eyes on the mysterious swelling under her blouse, her trim waist, the wonderful way everything seemed to come together.

There was more talk about the terms of the sale, and then suddenly they were gone.

They were hardly out the door when, unobtrusively, I went upstairs, entered the bathroom and locked the door behind me. Quickly, and without thinking, I knelt down and bestowed a kiss on the sweet and blessed toilet seat.

That was the first and only time I ever saw my Earth Mother.

As it turned out, she and her husband bought the house, and a month or two later my grandmother moved out. But, like Christopher Columbus, I had found new land. And, like him, I wasn’t aware of the vast extent of what I had discovered.

© 2006 Short North Gazette, Columbus, Ohio. All rights reserved.