Probably the main reason I had decided to visit my home town, while in Florida, was to see the house in which I had grown up. My father had sold the house some 12 or 13 years ago and I had no idea who was living there now.
The house was built in, I think, 1959. My folks bought it brand spanking new. I saw pictures of it in the days before my sister and I came along. The pictures were black and white, but my mother told me that the house had originally been painted white with dark grey accents. By the time of my first memories of the house it was a very subtle pastel pink with white highlights, which it remained until well into my teenage years, when we painted it green. At that time we also painted over the terrazzo of the front porch, a porch so slick and slippery after the frequent thunderstorms that it was a wonder that none of us ever fell and split our heads open.
The house was built at the end of a row of houses, in what I presume was a fairly new neighborhood. Another row of houses stood across a narrow road, to the west, and just beyond, Lake Summit, where I first learned to swim. There was a lovely white sand beach that had actually been owned by our neighbors, Fred and Edna Hoaglin, but they had always given us free rein and I spent many summers wallowing in the warm, green-tinted shallows, which would quickly become cold at any depth because of the springs that fed the lake, plucking apple snails from the sandy bottom, carefully avoiding the reeds where it was rumored cotton-mouth moccasins lurked, and later, fishing for bass, and water skiing, during those two or three years that we had a boat.
The house faced east, onto the then named Cypress Gardens Road. Across the road was a vast orange grove. A scary place as a child because, in warmer months, tractors would pull huge red pesticide spraying machines, with giant noisy fans, up and down the rows, and in winter, smudge pots, filled with foul smelling oil, burned with a black smoke rising from their chimneys, keeping the trees from freezing.
On the south end of our property we kept our own little grove of citrus trees, all in a line. Two orange trees, a grapefruit tree, a tangerine and a lemon. The lemon tree died before I was born, but the rest thrived and we picked the fruit and had juice in season. The rest of the year we drank frozen juice, which has always seemed to me a sin for a Floridian.
Also to the south abutted the property line of the tourist attraction for which our road was named, Cypress Gardens. Cypress Gardens had been there since the 1930s. The back gates were a short walk away, and we always entered the park for free, playing in the famous gardens, running along the well-kept paths, watching the electric boats glide through the canals, and the four-times-daily water ski show.
Across Cypress Gardens Road was an orange stand. A tourist trap sitting on what was purported to be the second highest point in Florida, though Google contests this. In the 1920s a tower had stood on the site of the orange stand, and people could pay a few pennies to climb to the top and look out over the citrus groves.
As we grew up, various freezes wiped out the orange groves. New housing developments appeared. Shopping centers followed. The orange stand closed and was torn down. Cypress Gardens Road was renamed and bypassed by a four-lane highway. Cypress Gardens went out of business, long after I moved away, killed, like so many of its ilk, by Disney, and was reopened and closed twice again.
I approached first from the little road that had gone past the back of my house. In all the time I had lived there, the road, Lake Summit Drive, had been a through road, passing by Cypress Gardens and joining the larger Cypress Gardens Road later on. But now it was a dead end, cut off abruptly at the former Cypress Gardens property line.
I looked up from the road and across the half acre of lawn that still seemed to be infested with sandspurs and fire ants, as it had been in my day, though neither of those had ever forced me into shoes and socks. It was always flip flops at home, even in winter.
I saw immediately that the tall oak tree that had stood in front of the garage was gone. In its place was a small flower bed. A pang went through me. It was a shock to see that tree gone. There had been five pine trees near it when I was very young. Taller by far than that oak tree, and I had loved the cool shadows beneath them. But my father had them cut down when I was very young, because he was afraid they would fall and crush the house in a hurricane.
That remaining oak tree was the first thing I saw when I stepped out the back door in the morning and the last thing I passed heading back at night. I had never climbed the tree. Climbing had been reserved for the gigantic banyan tree in Cypress Gardens. Indeed, the deep crevices of the oak tree’s rough bark, like a dried up, drought-ridden mud flat plastered around its trunk, had never invited close contact. But no, I had never climbed it because it’s first limbs started far above my head. At least 12 feet straight up. My father had hung a tire swing from the lowest branch, a stout offshoot that had grown at a 90 degree angle to the trunk. When that tire had turned our clothes black, to the exasperation of my mother, my father replaced the tire with a wooden board, which served ideally as both seat and step. It was the most fun to stand on the swing and hang off the rope perilously, only hard ground beneath us. But we were orangutans then.
My father had planted two other trees in my youth, and these remained, thick and strong, their foliage now towering over the house. Neither of them held any emotional resonance for me, however. On one of them hung a No Trespassing sign. Another shocking change from memory. That sign and the abrupt ending of Lake Summit Dr. made me feel unwelcome. I didn’t stop for a picture but turned the car around and headed for the main road and the front of the house.
It was a short drive, and I pulled into the driveway in just a minute or two. Here, changes were more apparent. Someone had extended the garage forward, apparently adding an extra room to that end of the house. The front door had been widened to double its former size. There was a chain link fence across the front of the house, and on it another sign -- Beware of Dog. But some things were the same. The plastic shutters my father and I had hung beside each window were still there. Though they had been painted white, and the house a light tan.
As I parked my car and stepped out, the dog the sign warned about started barking from the front porch, joined immediately by another from inside the house. And then a third dog appeared from behind the house, on my side of the fence. He, too, barked, but I could see that as long as I faced him, that would be all he would do.
The dog was afraid, and I had to assume that the owner was afraid, too. What would possess someone to throw up signs and fences and dogs and who knew what else to keep out the brightly shining sun and what was still a nice neighborhood? What was there to be afraid of? There was a blue pickup truck in the driveway and I hoped I would be able to ask.
I didn’t honk my horn or call out to the house. I couldn’t approach the door to knock, but the dogs were loud enough to alert any occupant. While I waited to see if anyone would come out, I wondered what the inside of the house looked like, now.
If you had entered the house while I lived there (and so few people did, but that’s another story), you would have entered a tiny foyer. A white louvred door protected the oil furnace in it’s small room. To your left was a closet, filled with various and sundry. Some winter coats, my parents’ pink and blue suitcases, my father’s still and 8mm movie cameras, along with a projector and screen for the traditional viewings of filmed family vacations during holiday time.
To your right, the way widened out into the living room. Immediately beside the front door hung two beautiful Balinese masks, their dark shining wood a dramatic contrast to the pale golden walls. A huge picture window (now gone) looked out onto the orange groves across the road and beneath the picture window was a tasteful yellow couch with orange and green pillows on it. A wall extended two thirds of the way across the house, dividing the living room from the kitchen and dining room, and out from that wall a red brick planter had been built. Four feet tall, and as long. It’s twin was on the other side of the room. A large round chair, upholstered in the same fabric as the yellow couch, but colored orange, nestled in the corner made by the dividing wall and the brick planter. A straight orange sibling was at the opposite side of the room, next to my father’s marble-topped desk, which was tucked into an indentation in the wall along that side. Then the brick planter on that side, and then a dark green sofa that curved around to and along the west wall. Two huge louvred glass windows showed a view of Lake Summit and the setting sun. At all times various large televisions, first black & white, and then color, sat in front of the green couch. Behind the television was a long mahogany table, with two leaves folded down. A portion of my mother’s milk glass collection was displayed on the table. On each side of the table were two delicate wooden benches of dark wood, upholstered in green, orange and brown stripes. In the center of the living room was a large round carpet, the color of which I’ve never been able to pinpoint. A light sage? Pale green? In any event, it’s pastel circle had always suggested a planetary expanse upon which to stage my childish games. Platoons of plastic soldiers could march across its surface. Cars and trucks drive unimpeded. Dinosaurs ambled around its circumference. Painted portraits of my mother and father always watched me from the walls of the living room while I played. My parents had always, always looked so much younger in those portraits. Serene. Above the cares of the world. The table, the orange chairs and the yellow couch had seldom been used. They had not been forbidden, just avoided. We didn’t sit on them, and I didn’t play on them.
Behind the wall that extended two thirds of the way across the house was the kitchen. My mother’s demesne. Green counters, with a pattern straight out of the 1950s. Green wallpaper, and wooden cabinets of a pale reddish-yellow wood. One counter divided kitchen and dining room. In the cabinet underneath sat bottles of gin and vermouth and whiskey and liqueur. Never touched by my parents. Kept for guests who never came. Because I didn’t see my parents ever drink, I was never tempted to touch them as a teenager, either. My mother’s pots and pans hung on two walls, their copper bottoms always polished to a high sheen. The kitchen floor, a dark patterned linoleum, was the only floor of the house not covered in wooden parquet. Parquet that my mother waxed on her hands and knees, and then buffed with a hulking ivory colored machine, time and time again. I always liked the sound the floor made when I walked on it. The little crack of the wooden tiles
In the dining room was the oval table around which we ate countless meals. It was the table where I did my school homework. Always covered with tablecloths and place mats to protect the wood. The four chairs around it were upholstered in orange vinyl. In summer, when I wore shorts, my skin would cling to the seat. The end of every meal, on days like that, was punctuated by the ripping paper sound of my flesh separating stickily from the seat. My father’s chair was the only one that had arms. Behind his seat were two bookcases, with his (and only his) few books, and later, when my sister and I started school, a set of Compton’s encyclopedias. There was a huge bureau in the dining room, on top of which was the rest of my mother's milk glass collection, and in which were important papers and also the photo albums. On the thick black pages were pasted black & white, crinkle-edged photos of aunts and uncles whom I seldom met, grandparents who were dead not long after I was born, weddings, wars, and lives I never knew. Large copper trenchers hung on the wall above the bureau, with scenes of inns and ale-houses pounded into them.
There was a door between the kitchen and dining room that led to the garage. Although there was a back door in the house, proper, we had always gone into the back yard from the garage, for some reason. We had a series of dogs, always dachshunds, as I grew up, and the garage was where they spent the night and the coldest winter days. The rest of the time they were chained in the back yard, poor things. They must have gone mad from boredom. We typically parked the family car in the garage, and it was one of my chores to put newspaper around the tires so the dogs wouldn't piss on them. There were, in the garage, all the accouterments of the typical middle class American life. A washing machine and a dryer, garden tools, a riding lawn mower, jars and cans filled with nails and screws, an old cushioned chaise longue and a heavy red umbrella that we would always take on day trips to Daytona Beach.
Turning to the left from the front door, a hallway led to bedrooms and bathrooms. As a very young child I had been afraid to walk down that hallway at night. The hallway light was seldom turned on and I was afraid of the darkness there. At night I dreamed of electric monsters running at me out of the depths, the genesis of which was probably the frequent thunderstorms we had every summer. My mother and father never countenanced my fear. They would never turn on the hall light for me, and my mother would always grow angry when I at first refused to go to bed. She would yell, and because I was more frightened of her than of what lurked in the black I would eventually walk to my bedroom, certain that I would be grabbed by some unknown menace before I reached the safety of my bed.
My bedroom was painted blue. Pictures of clowns hung on the walls when I was very young and, later, my own paintings and drawings. My clothes and toys had typically taken up only one half of the closet and once we stopped buying real Christmas trees the cardboard box containing the fake tree we eventually bought from Montgomery Ward occupied the other half. When we got our first color television, which we kept for many years, the black & white set was moved into my room. I would lie on my double bed and watch Creature Feature every Saturday afternoon. A double feature of monster movies, both American and Japanese, and horror films from the 50’s and 60’s. The show was hosted by a local radio DJ who played a character named Dr. Paul Bearer. If I could get the rabbit ears adjusted just right I would watch the original Outer Limits on Channel 6 out of Orlando. Later I watched British television shows -- Monty Python, Red Dwarf, The Young Ones, The Goodies, Doctor Who -- late into the night. A refuge, that room, as so many children’s bedrooms are.
My sister’s bedroom was painted pink. Filled by a pale wooden dresser, on top of which was a music box in which a ballerina spun and danced on a spring, and by dolls and toy ponies. I entered the room seldom and never stayed long. The living room was where my sister and I played. Later, she and I drew apart and whatever happened in her bedroom was her secret.
My parents bedroom was painted light green. On either side of the king-size bed were dark green vinyl upholstered recliners. My father seldom sat in his. I don’t think my mother ever sat in hers. But I read hundreds of books sitting in my father’s recliner. I sat there hour after hour, day after day. The quiet green of my parent’s bedroom is the color of my formative years.
There were two bathrooms in the house. The boys bathroom with blue counters and tiling, the girls bathroom in pink. The girls’ bathroom also had a small extension with a makeup table and little pink chair.
As I stood in front of the house, the three dogs barking at me, I wondered what had changed inside the house. Were the beautiful parquet floors still there? Was the face I had always seen in the sponge patterned plaster of my bedroom ceiling still staring down onto the current occupant? Were the vulgar words my sister had carved into the wooden frame of her closet door in a fit of anger still faintly showing?
If anyone was inside they were apparently uninterested or too afraid to come out and see why there was a stranger in their driveway. I took a picture and drove away. Unsatisfied.
As with many people, the bulk of my formative years were spent in school, and school was where I learned how life worked.
Although I attended five schools from 1st grade through 12th (because that was how the grades were divided), during my visit I only went to see the ones that carried the most meaning (an extremely subjective, relative term comparing between the two). That meant Brigham Elementary School and Winter Haven High School.
Brigham, now known as Brigham Academy, had grown a bit, but the core structures were still there, sporting a new paint job but little changed otherwise. Perhaps they now had air conditioning. They certainly hadn't when I had attended. I well remember stifling days in both Spring and Autumn when the most important goal was to not leave the paper on my desk completely soaked in sweat, if I could help it, before turning it in.
The long thin buildings originally had each housed a single grade. Each year I moved farther and farther down 6th Street, from Ave. C to Ave. A. Because the strongest memories are usually associated with pain, the painful things are those I remember most.
In the 1st grade, practically on the first day of school, the boy sitting next to me pushed me. I pushed him back. This should have settled the matter, but of course it never does. But instead of fighting, the boy told the teacher, Mrs. Boggs, that I had pushed him. Despite my protestations that the boy had pushed me first, Mrs. Boggs rapped my knuckles with a ruler. But not his. As I sat and cried silently, the lesson I learned in 1st grade was what a snitch was. I knew, at six years of age, why nobody likes a rat.
In the 2nd grade, on the playground, we played kickball and other games. The coach taught physical education as well as English. One wonders how I achieved any level of literacy.
One day, during a kickball game, I was playing first base. A kid named Tyler was pitching. Tyler was overweight and I recall my father liked to refer to him as Tubby Tyler. Never to his face, though. My father was insensitive but not a complete asshole.
Now, kickball had many of the same basic rules as baseball or softball. A ball is pitched to a guy on home plate. The ball is propelled back out into the field. The object is to run around the bases without getting tagged out.
So Tyler underhanded the ball to the... kicker I guess, not batter. The kicker kicked the ball straight down the first base line to me. I caught it and, not knowing what else to do, since no one else was on base, threw it back to Tyler, the pitcher. I didn’t know that, unlike in baseball where the runner is automatically out as soon as the ball is in the first baseman’s hands, in kickball I actually had to tag the guy.
Now, even then I knew that this made no sense. Why would the runner even bother to run all the way to first base where I was waiting, ball in hand? But those were the rules. Tyler was so furious at me when I threw the ball back to him that he couldn’t even speak. Finally he growled out, “Oooooooh, Seaslug!” his jowls quivering mightily.
I learned several lessons in 2nd grade. The first was that rules are important. The second was that people assign extraordinary importance to the rules with the least significance in the grand scheme of things. I stopped enjoying sports after that.
In the 3rd grade I had an argument with a kid in 5th grade and challenged him to a fight.
We faced each other, standing in the shade of a tree (In fact, I’m sure it’s the same tree as the one in the pictures above on the extreme right) on an absolutely brilliant sunshiney day.
I threw the first punch, hitting him in the arm. In fact, we actually took turns. His return strike was to my stomach. Again I swung, again to the arm. Again he hit me in the stomach. The fight was over. I learned several more lessons in 3rd grade. First, don’t pick a fight with somebody bigger, older, and probably wiser than you. Second, if you do pick a fight with somebody bigger, older, and probably wiser, know how to fight. Something I wish I could have asked my father how to do.
While in the 4th grade I was standing in line, in the cafeteria, waiting for another delicious meal of mystery meat, collard greens with vinegar, corn bread as dry as the Sahara, and Velda brand milk, served in little cartons that could only be opened with sharper knives than we were allowed, and with paper straws that would collapse upon the first sip faster than a junkie’s veins.
During lunch, the librarian stood in the cafeteria to monitor things. On a particular day, the librarian left the cafeteria. Just as she was disappearing from view, and as the screen door started to slam shut, someone, I don’t know who, shouted out, “Good! The old goose is leaving!” I found this funny and clapped my hands. Instantly the screen door screeched open and the librarian’s basilisk gaze focused on me, in mid-clap. My heart turned to stone. I could no more convince the librarian that I had not called her an old goose than I could convince Mrs. Boggs that I hadn’t started a pushing match in 1st grade. I was made to stand with my nose against the wall for the entire lunch period. In retrospect, one less day of collard greens in vinegar was not entirely a bad thing.
The lesson I learned in 4th grade was that people will very happily let you take the blame for something they did. I should point out, however, that nobody ratted out the unknown comedian.
In 5th grade I was taught mathematics by the appropriately named Mrs. Counts. Mrs. Counts still is the tallest woman I have ever personally met. As a 10 year old she towered over me like a sequoia over Danny DeVito.
On another brutally hot sunny Florida day, Mrs. Counts returned graded tests to us. For some reason she decided to have each of us read his or her grade aloud to her so that she could document it in her grade book. I had scored a D on this particular test. Naturally, I was embarrassed about having to announce this to the entire class so when it was my turn I said, “B”. But Mrs. Counts new perfectly well that I had not earned a B on that test and so she called me to her desk to look at the paper. In a loud voice she said, “This is a D! That’s a lot different than a B, isn’t it!?”
In 5th grade I learned what cruelty is.
And so it went through 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th grades, until I reached high school.
In high school I was essentially a nobody. One of many, to be sure. It was a large student body. As I recall, I graduated with about 400 other people. But I didn’t experience any of those iconic events that one so often sees in American films about school. I didn’t play sports, I wasn’t in the band, I wasn’t in the 4H club with the farmers. I coasted.
My least favorite classes, the maths, were at one end of the school, and my favorites, English, literature, drama, were at the other. I always managed to schedule my favorite classes for the end of the day, and so after midday I would walk the long outdoor hallway, past the gym, and into the cool, air-conditioned language arts building.
As I stood in front of the school, in the present day, I saw that most of it was under either construction or demolition. The classes I had liked least had all been torn down and were being replaced by a multi-story structure. But the language arts building had been renamed for my favorite English teacher. Ruth Wolfe.
How I had liked her. So inspiring, so funny. I felt like I could actually talk to her. And on one of those occasions when I did I nearly died of shame when I tried to use in conversation, and mispronounced, the word lithe, having only ever read the word and never heard it spoken before. Unlike its long, flowing, onomatopoeic-like proper pronunciation, I said it in a short abrupt lith. “Lith?” said Mrs. Wolfe. “Oh, lithe! Hahahahaha” How stupid I felt as I walked along the hallway with my idol. Even so, they should have renamed the whole school after her.
Drama had Sally Hendricks, on whom I secretly had a crush. I thought her a carefree spirit. A hippie type, wild and untamed. I daresay the only thing untamed about her was her long, frizzy black hair, but you couldn’t have convinced me of that then.
I never did follow through on my crush and ask Sally out on a date or anything, and eventually she moved away, but she must have known I was fond of her because, a couple years later, while going to school for a new job she was starting, she called me and I drove out to see her. I took her to Tarpon Springs where we walked on the docks, looked at sponge divers and their boats, raked our fingers through souvenir sand dollars, shells, and of course sponges, and ate sea food. Afterward, we went back to her hotel room and smoked a doob. It was lovely.
Of course, besides her somewhat fey attitude, Sally’s major attraction, back in high school, was that she represented the unknown, the far away, the adventurous. She was from exotic Xenia, Ohio. I had wanted to leave my small home town for as long as I could remember and by my senior year I was absolutely frantic to get out. By then I was working weekends 40 miles away, near Orlando. A veritable metropolis to my eyes. I even tried to get an apartment there right out of high school. An idea nixed by my parents.
I had no starry-eyed memories of school chums or school spirit or school proms anchoring me to this place on which I was standing again. This high school was probably the most changed of anyplace I had visited so far, but I felt no nostalgia for things lost. Perhaps I was happy to see it apparently thriving and expanding.
But school was long over.
Leaving my first stop, the Catholic church I had attended as a boy, I immediately noticed, as I drove along one of the main drags, that there were no, or at least few, new buildings. Most if not all of the old buildings, which had been there as long as I could remember, were still there. The donut shop I had known was in its place, probably with the same grease in the fryers. The grocery store across the street from the church, the parking lot of which we had always used every Sunday. The Haven Condos, in a building that had once been a rather grand and old-fashioned hotel.
I drove into the center of of town. In the park an event was occurring. Music was playing and booths were set up. I couldn’t detect a theme, and the event was sparsely attended, even though it was Saturday. I left my car and started walking.
Most of the shops and offices were closed. Beyond the range of the DJ in the park, there was an oppressive silence. I began to feel the deadly boredom that I had known as a youth, that particular level of tedium usually reserved for the young. That horrible dissatisfaction that had driven me out of this town at 18 years of age, seldom looking back.
On the corner I saw a building, empty now, but soon to be a boot store. It was the building where my mother had bought my clothes when I was very young. I’m certain I’ve told this story before; how like the town this store was. To walk into the shop was to suddenly go color blind and see everything in a sepia tint. Drab drab drab. Drab clothes, drab people. So unlike the glittering bazaars I saw on television. Shining, colorful, bright, exciting. Not here. Solid, no-nonsense, don’t ask questions, stay in line, blend in. That was what the walls whispered.
Matrons glided through the aisles, the dementors of their day, waiting to assist with a sale. As I looked out through the glass entrance, out onto 3rd Street, one afternoon, one of them sidled up behind me. I watched a man with long hair and a beard walk across the street. “You don’t want to be like one of THEM.” the sales clerk said to me, who was surely no more than 7 or 8 years old. I didn’t even know what one of them WAS, but because she had told me I didn’t want to be like one of them, I resentfully felt that I DID want to be like one of them. I certainly didn’t want to be like her, the creeping ghoul.
Around the corner from this clothing store was Buster Brown’s, where I always got my shoes. Brown shoes. Brown shoes that were not sneakers. Brown shoes that were not cool or fun. Brown shoes with arch support. Brown shoes to avoid flat footedness. Brown shoes that said, “You’re different from the other children.” Thanks Buster Brown, you and your stupid sailor hat. Thanks to your dog, Tige, too, that rabid, freakish-looking, mutant devil dog. More a crocodile than a canine. And thanks to Dr. Ryan, my pediatrician, who almost certainly made the referral to the now unknown, now forgotten, podiatrist who must have sentenced me to these two brown devices of torture and humiliation. THANKS! THANKS A LOT!
The Buster Brown store was no more. I had outlived it, and the need for arch support. 18 years of wearing flip flops or bare feet in the Florida sunshine had not only prevented flat feet but had practically given me prehensile toes like a bonobo.
Only a few businesses were open. One of them, the beloved used bookstore I had frequented as a teenager. Or one like it anyway. And a sandwich shop. New by the looks of it. I ate lunch there and then walked back to my car.
I was surprised to see that the public library had not only moved but had expanded greatly into a new looking building. Optimism returned and I continued my journey with new hope.
I had last been there 15 years ago to bury my mother, and had dropped all contact after that; and I had not been a regular visitor before. During those 15 years I maintained only the most cursory curiosity about what was happening, and I wasn’t particularly anxious or excited to see the town now. Nevertheless, I felt it would be foolish to waste the chance to see my boyhood home, again.
I drove in from the northern outskirts, rather than directly into town from the east. I wanted to see if there was any sprawl. If the town had grown. I found it comforting that there wasn’t any. Everything looked essentially the same, and I found this to be true throughout the day. It was an affirmation, and a source of satisfaction, that I had grown up and left childish things behind me. At the same time, places I had known were still there, and I savored the feeling of nostalgia.
There were the same pine trees, the same cypress. The ubiquitous grey Spanish Moss hanging everywhere. The winding back roads.
My first stop was the church my family had attended. Regularly, when my sister and I were children, intermittently as we passed through our tweens, and then not at all.
I don’t have the pictures, but I remember those of my baptism; attended just by the godparents, the Schicks, Ray and his wife; and those of my first communion. There’s one of a whole herd of us little rug rats, the girls in white dresses, the boys wearing little bright scarlet clip-on neckties, all of us lined up on the front steps of the church, a nun in full penguin getup standing beside us. I still see the prim smile on the nun’s face, and a slight gleam of Nurse Ratched cruelty behind the oval glasses.
My parents tried to participate in the church community while I was young. I attended a religious school on Sundays, after mass I think. I remember one exercise required that I draw Jeebus H. Christ. In the end, my mother drew it for me and I just colored it in. I think my mother was a frustrated artist. Don’t let me forget to expand on that one of these days. As I got older the church staged social events for teenagers. Poorly attended and awkward affairs, all of them.
While I was still very young, my family would go out to eat breakfast at the Dutch Pantry restaurant, just down the road. Later, that became lunch at the Howard Johnson’s. I always had the fried clams. I can taste them now. God, they were good! Little skinny chewy things that they were, smothered in tartar sauce. At that time, my home town was the Spring training camp for the Boston Red Sox. Many of the players used to stay at the Howard Johnson. My father carried around a baseball so that he could get autographs. I still have the name Tony Conigliaro stuck in my head, I heard it so often. In later years money got tight and we didn’t eat out anymore.
As it does for so many, Holy Mother Church cured me of religion. I think I’ve told this story before, but it was Father Smith, in particular, who first confirmed for me what a good friend said much later. He said, “Religion is in the churches, God is in the bushes.” By which he meant that God is out in nature and not restricted to man’s puny interpretation, boxed in with rules and rites, sacrifices and sanctimony.
It was Easter Sunday. My parents required that we attend confession just two times a year. Christmas and Easter. This gave us plenty of time to work up some sins to confess, my sister and I not being delinquents of any sort. Not until later, anyway. I was a boring little shit and there is no doubt that my list of bad deeds would put anyone to sleep, but they must have been the pinnacle of tedium for our parish priest at that time, Father Smith. Father Smith was not a friendly fellow. He was short tempered and wanted everything strictly by the book. And I don’t mean the bible. I don’t think Father Smith read the bible. He read the Wall St. Journal. Father Smith’s god was an accountant god, a businessman god, a CEO god. Father Smith expected quarterly interest statements, not confession. Anyway, it’s no surprise that, because I wasn’t yammering about masturbation, bestiality, or murder, and because the Easter Mass was soon to start, that Father Smith cut me off mid-sin, gave me five Hail Mary’s and five Our Fathers, and was out of that confession booth lickety split. Father Smith was fast. Fast like a little badger. That presumed pederast had cut me off! I was outraged! I was mortified! I didn’t know whether I had been given dispensation or a pink slip! It was at that moment that I was utterly done with Catholicism, and that was my last confession.
Thinking about all these things, I sat inside my old church. It was Saturday and a mass was not far off, so it was open. No, the church and outbuildings had not changed. Sure, a new coat of paint, a new sound system, but still the same at its core.
I got up and walked out, genuflecting and splashing myself with holy water by habit, and just in case, and headed for the next little sign post on my memory tour.
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seaslug_of_doom- Navanax Sacratus
- Thirty Two Years, Directionless
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