Читать книгу A Hill of Beans - Joyce Putnam Eblen - Страница 4

THE LIE: "Someday you will have children who will turn out to be as awful as you are; then you'll find out for yourself what we mean."

THE TRUTH: "Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord." Ephesians 6: 4

When I was about five years old, my parents bought a bigger home in nearby Jeffersonville in search of better schools in a more upscale neighborhood. The house was located on Whitehall Road just around the corner from what was commonly called the Halford Tract. The Halford Tract was the residential neighborhood for wealthier professionals. My parents couldn't afford one of those homes, so they chose the next best thing-- a house as close as possible to them. It was one of those houses built from a kit purchased from Sears or Montgomery Ward and is now considered classic, but I remember seeing it for the first time and thinking that it was ugly. (All the people I knew about were moving into brand new homes, either bungalows or split-levels.) It did have a very nice front porch, a front and backyard, and I would have my own bedroom.

Our new home had two very attractive features that immediately thrilled me. First of all, there wasn't a fence anywhere in sight. I felt a sense of freedom which I had never experienced before. Adding to that new sense of freedom was a huge lot right beside the house. I saw myself running and playing madly in that grass-filled lot, which was destined to become a gathering spot for all the neighborhood children. What fun we would all have together! When I mentioned this to my mother, she turned away and said nothing. I would soon find out why. Within weeks, my parents sold the lot to the neighbors whose property adjoined it. They said that they needed the money more than the lot. I never could figure out why those neighbors bought the lot in the first place. I never saw them use it for anything. I was never allowed to play there or even set foot in it. It remained in place only to torture me.

Even if that lot had remained in our possession, its future as a magnet drawing playmates to our home was a matter of some doubt. There simply were not many children in the neighborhood and the children who were there were older boys. Fortunately, my mother had friends who had daughters my age, and I had a cousin Debbie with whom I spent a lot of time. Still, I spent a lot of those early childhood years bored and alone. I often wondered why parents with young children would buy a house in a neighborhood without any children. As I grew older, I began to understand why. The house was next to the Halford Tract. Particularly for my mother, being next to a prestigious address was reason enough.

My parents did make one concession to the fact that they had children. They put up a swing set in the backyard behind the garage. (Actually, probably one of my uncles put it up. My father was not a handy man.) I really enjoyed swinging on summer days, making up stories and telling them to myself as I played alone.

Although I did not have any neighborhood playmates in those early childhood years, I was blessed with a large extended family. Although I never knew my paternal grandfather, my father's widowed mother, my Grandma, lived in an apartment at the end of South Whitehall Road, just a short walk away. My maternal grandparents, Nana and Pop-Pop, also lived in Jeffersonville. All of my grandparents were like characters out of a storybook. My Nana was known for her cooking and baking, so lots of family dinners were held out her house. She was also famous for her prowess at the skill games of local fairs and carnivals. She would ask us what particular prize we wanted, take aim, and then win it for us! Nana and Pop-Pop were one of the first families to buy a television set, making them even more popular among the grandchildren. I remember so well sitting on the sofa with Nana and Pop-Pop, watching the Friday night fights. It is from them that I inherited my love of baseball. We would sit and watch games on their state of the art black and white TV. In those days, a TV was more a piece of furniture than an electronic device. A tiny screen peeked out from a massive wooden cabinet. The actual baseball players themselves appeared as not much more than stick figures. There were minimal graphics which basically told the teams that were playing and the score. One could never really see what was happening with the baseball. For that we depended on those golden-toned announcers whose words brought those games to life for us. There was no strike zone box, no "super slow-mo", no instant replay, nor exit velocity calculations for home runs. But I would gladly trade all today's technology in my wide-screen high definition TV set to sit with my Nana and Pop-Pop once again and watch a baseball game.

My Grandma was very different. She had a much better education than most women of her era, having attended what is now known as the Perkiomen School. (It was more akin to a junior college than high school.) She was also an accomplished pianist who became well-known in the area as a private music teacher. Both her education and her artistic sensibilities set her apart from her contemporaries as did her Mennonite faith. A woman of cultural refinement, she was, at the same time, one of the Plain People.

My grandfather, a jeweler, had left her fairly well off, but she lived and dressed very simply her whole life. She made her own clothes, including her underwear, for most of her life. My Grandma had no TV, although she did buy a radio when she was well into her eighties and could no longer see to read. She did not play cards or other games. (Certainly she did not win any prizes for us at the carnivals!) However, she was not at all judgmental toward those of us who did enjoy such pleasures.

As a child, I thought my Grandma was quite peculiar. However, the longer I had her, the more I came to love and respect her. She lived to be one hundred years old, with all her mental faculties still intact as well as most of her physical ones, only dying from complications following emergency surgery for appendicitis. I remember hearing how the hospital staff struggled to remove her false teeth until they were told that those teeth would not come out because she still had all of her own! My Grandma was one of most encouraging and supportive figures in my life. Even though I had her until I was well into my thirties, I felt her loss very deeply. I still do.

It is a mystery to me how my father and mother ever got together. Certainly I know the facts of how they met and I've seen the photos of their early years together. They were married for over forty years and had two children together. Yet I do not remember seeing any visible displays of affection between the two of them. Part of that is due to the times in which they lived and part of that was due to their cultural heritage. All visible displays of feelings, whether good or bad, were discouraged.

It also seemed to me that they had very little in common. Yes, they were both public school teachers, but that was not enough to make a marriage. At the time they met, most young men were off fighting in World War II. My father was physically ineligible for military service and was an only child from a home of some means. My mother was one of six children from a family of very modest means. She frequently told me how much of a struggle it was for her to go to college. Her parents saw no use for it, especially for young women. (Perhaps this is some explanation for her insatiable quest for money and prestige which only seemed to worsen as she got older.)

They didn't even have many of the same interests. My father was lost in his own private universe of marching band music. My mother had played the cornet in her high school band, but that had been a very small part of her life. Unlike my father's, her high school years were pretty normal for the times. She went to dances and fairs with her friends and even went with them to Ocean City, New Jersey to spend a few days together during the summer. My father never mentioned his high school friends, if indeed he had any. When my parents married, they were both college graduates and Protestants. Apparently, that was considered enough to form a lifelong relationship.

Much the same kind of reasoning applied to having children. Unless there was some kind of problem, it was simply what was done after a couple married. My parents never conveyed the idea that children were a blessing from God and were to be loved and cherished. I don't think they even saw it that way. Their first child, a son, was born four years before I came along. He was the one to carry on the family name. Whether it happened by nature or by nurture, my brother grew up to be much like my father. Had he aspired to be a baseball player or a mechanic, I simply don't know what would have happened. He was never exposed to the normal boyhood world of those days, so there was no way to find out what other interests he might have developed on his own. He never got to play Little League baseball or go hiking or fishing with his dad. We simply weren't "those kind of people".

Activities were even more limited for me. When their second child turned out to be a girl, my parents had fulfilled the minimum requirements for the "ideal" suburban family of the fifties. They had two children, one of each gender, and that was plenty. Children were a lot of work and cost too much money. And as my mother often said to me, they should have quit while they were ahead. (Translation: Their son fulfilled all their needs. It was a mistake to have a second child.) Certainly being a parent is not easy and I am sure there were many times that I misbehaved. But even when I wasn't being punished for some misdeed, my father and mother always seem to have a vague air of disappointment with me. Nothing I did was ever quite right. Things were about to get worse—much worse.