Dad, whose given name was Irving, Irv for short, was born and raised on a small farm near Normal. When he graduated from high school his dad insisted he go to college to learn everything there was to know about farming. So he attended Illinois State which was just on the other side of town from where he grew up. Somewhere along the way Dad decided to study business administration instead of farming. He also met Mom at college.
Mom, whose name was Eloise, though she cringes when anyone calls her that, was anything but a farm girl. Dad called her big city 'cause technically she was from Chicago. At least she was born there. In truth she grew-up in the suburbs on the northwest side of Chicago. Mom's parents, who I called Gram and Gramps, always called her Ellie. Dad and everyone else apart from us kids called her Lois.
Dad used to tell me crazy stories about Mom. In one she ran away from home and eloped with him. In another he said she married him because she didn't have bus fare to get back to Chicago after she graduated. He claimed Papaw and Mamaw, what I called his parents, gave them a place to stay right after they married so they didn't have to freeze to death out in the cold or anything. When I asked Mom if that was true she didn't exactly deny it, but she made it sound more like she felt sorry for Dad because he was a country boy and he always wanted to be a city boy.
Embarrassing as it is for me to admit it I was gullible enough to believe Dad's stories – for a while anyway. After I got older I heard the real truth. I understood that some of what Dad told me was correct just he slanted it a little in his favor. You see, Dad was shy. In college he had two friends who sort of set him up to meet Mom at a party. Apparently, Mom did most of the talking. Dad must have liked her a lot because they ended up married.
If Dad had a special power, it was being quiet. When he did talk, you probably needed to listen because usually he was mad about something. Most of the time he let Mom do the talking, though. Mom seemed to be okay with that because she loved to talk.
It wasn't only Dad's stories I fell for. My sisters tricked me, too. Pretty much anyone I trusted took advantage of me. What did I know? I was easily duped.
When I was only six I still believed in a lot of things people lie about - including Santa, the Easter Bunny and most of the special offers advertised on Saturday morning cartoon TV cereal commercials. Brenda, my oldest sister who was the first person I knew so far who actually went by her given name as it was on her birth certificate, enjoyed being the source of my disappointment telling me whenever someone had lied to me. Whether it was done as a joke or not, it was not right to lie to a little kid – just saying.
Whenever Brenda made fun of me, my other older sister Linda, whose real name is Belinda, laughed and teased me because of how stupid I was. It was what older sisters were supposed to do to their baby brothers – at least to their thinking. Yes, revenge would come when I got older, but that's getting ahead of the story here.
Mom grew up an only child not too far from Lake Michigan and only a few minutes from Wisconsin. She lived in this really big house with a swimming pool in the backyard where just Gram and Gramps live now. Gramps was an executive of some kind who worked in one of the tall buildings in Chicago. Gram did a lot of charity work. To me it seemed like they had a lot of room for just two people, but I guess they didn't have to worry about where everyone was going to sleep whenever we came to visit them, which we did about once or twice every summer and usually for either Thanksgiving or Christmas.
Going there for visits was great, especially when we piled into the van and headed for the beach. Not that I complained, but I wasn't sure why it was necessary to go to the beach if all we were going to do was swim – which we could have done in the backyard in their swimming pool. The lake was more fun, I guess. There were other things to do there.
Oblivious to all the warnings about over exposure to the sun, especially when there was playing to be done, going to the beach meant sunburn. Spending an entire day out in the sun, even with sun block on, was extremely dangerous for me, due to my fair complexion. Mom used to say, I could walk past a picture of the sunset and get burnt. That wasn't far from the truth. She knew. I took after her having red hair, freckles and extremely white skin. Because I generally was outside whenever I played, I stayed in the shade as much as possible. Even so, wherever my skin was exposed turned red before, maybe eventually, turning tan.
One summer day when both Sandra and I were eight, my dad was going up to Chicago to fly out on a business trip to New York. Mom was driving him to the Midway Airport. Dad hated flying out of O'Hare because of the confusing, spaghetti-like freeway system around it – not that he ever drove when he had to go there. Mom served as his chauffer anytime he had to go anywhere in Chicago because she was from there originally. Somehow, despite all the things that changed about the city since she last lived there, Mom never seemed to get lost when she drove. Dad learned that a long time before I was born.
Other than taking Dad to the airport, there was nothing planned that day. Of course, when Mom asked if I wanted to go I was ready and rearing to go. Even at age eight, I understood Mom needed to take me along because my older sisters wouldn't pay proper attention to me in her absence. Brenda was thirteen so she was self-impressed at being a teenager – though just barely. Linda was ten, impressed in her own way at having reached double digits – which she claimed sort of made her like a teen, somehow. Neither of them paid a lot of attention to me, which was generally a good thing except for when Mom wanted them to watch me. I could die and they wouldn't know it until they came looking for me in response to Mom's car pulling into the driveway. To her credit Mom knew that. A trip to Chicago and back would take a huge chunk out of the middle of the day, around five hours, which was too long for her to leave me with my mostly evil sisters.
Mom didn’t like me hanging out at Sandra's house for most of the day either. Mom always worried I'd wear out my welcome. I asked Sandra's Mom about that and she told me I was like a part of the family. Family can wear out their welcome too, I suppose, just it takes longer. Except for the excitement of the idea of a road trip, I might have preferred staying behind just to be at a Sandra's house because she had some really cool things to do at her house, like all her video games, but Mom insisted in taking me along. That meant the trip there and back would take six hours because we would stop somewhere to eat and maybe have to stop a couple of times going and coming for me to use the restroom. Also, Mom hated driving alone, so having me to talk to was better than nothing.
For me, going anywhere was better than just hanging around our neighborhood. But since I planned everyday around spending time playing with Sandra, we kind of always had plans already. When I talked to her on the phone the night before, Sandra told me she was working on a special secret project. She hadn't told me what it was yet. So, not wanting to miss out on finding out what she had been working on, I asked if she could come along on the road trip. At least that way I would have her to talk to and do other things with on the way to and from the airport. Of course, my request started a chain reaction of questions beginning with my Dad asking, "Why?"
"Because I'm sure she'd like to go, too," I replied. Wasn't that obvious? What kid would refuse a road trip?
A minor discussion ensued. At the end of it Mom told me I needed to call to ask her for her parents' permission. It seemed silly to me. It wasn't like Sandra hadn't gone places with us before. I mean, getting permission once for something should be enough as long as nothing bad happened before, right? I knew better than to argue, though. As required, I called, except when Sandra's Mom answered the phone, I seized the opportunity and asked her directly.
"Can Sandra come with me to take my dad to the airport in Chicago?"
The result might be expected. Her mom yelled, asking Sandra if she wanted to go. Now, Sandra was kind of already on her way out the door to come to my house anyway, so I knew what the answer was before I heard her confirm it with her mom. Why was all that asking and answering necessary?
Maybe people just feel it's necessary to talk even if all they do is ask silly questions and receive equally stupid answers. To me, it was something my Mom could have answered with a simple, okay and been done with it. Now, since I've graduated to thinking something like an adult, I understand the necessity of letting Sandra's parents in on the plans, but back then, it seemed pretty silly to both Sandra and me.
There wasn't a big deal about Sandra tagging along for the ride or anything. Mom liked Sandra. Dad did too, but he never came right out and said it. Dad was friends with Sandra's dad. Our moms got along well too. Dad worried a little about me hanging out with a girl almost all the time, but he understood the situation. She lived a few doors down. The guys on my street were mostly younger or older. The few who were my age were not the kind I wanted to be around. For the most part, they weren't the sorts my mom and dad would approve of anyway. So, Sandra was my best - and pretty-much only - friend throughout that period of my life.
For both Sandra and me, the idea of going to Chicago for any reason was exciting. It was reason enough to make the otherwise dull trip up the Interstate. If you've never experienced a ride anywhere in the Midwest, let me explain. Flat and boring landscape with barns and silos here and there along with a few trees. When storms roll through and lightning strikes, it hits the tallest things. In the Midwest those things were trees, barns, silos, houses, or whatever was above the grass. Many times an overpass on the Interstate looked like a hill from a distance. Some places really tall towers carry electricity across the countryside and in others there were relatively new windmills that turned wind into electricity. Unfortunately birds flew into the spinning blades maiming or killing themselves.
Overall, in the countryside around where I grew up there was more 'nothing to see' than 'anything to do'. Without Sandra along, I might have fallen asleep while staring out the backseat window as the humdrum landscape passed by. The one or two interesting things to see along the way were exceptions Mom or Dad might have pointed out in the past to prevent me from missing them, but, considering I was eight, I had made the trip enough times that I was on my own as far sightseeing. Sandra felt the way as I did about the scenery. So, as we sat together in the back seat, mostly we talked to one another. That way Mom and Dad could pay attention to driving and their own conversation in the front seat and not be bothered with entertaining us.
Mom offered us coloring books and crayons for entertainment along the way. Dad handed us a legal pad and two pencils. But we were bored quickly with both and broke out our handheld games and went at it in head to head competition until motion sickness got the better of me. Settling back in the seat with a headache, I apologized to Sandra. She shrugged it off, saying she was tired of beating me anyway. I suggested we talk some more instead and for a while we did that until my headache went away.
Mom, whose name was Eloise, though she cringes when anyone calls her that, was anything but a farm girl. Dad called her big city 'cause technically she was from Chicago. At least she was born there. In truth she grew-up in the suburbs on the northwest side of Chicago. Mom's parents, who I called Gram and Gramps, always called her Ellie. Dad and everyone else apart from us kids called her Lois.
Dad used to tell me crazy stories about Mom. In one she ran away from home and eloped with him. In another he said she married him because she didn't have bus fare to get back to Chicago after she graduated. He claimed Papaw and Mamaw, what I called his parents, gave them a place to stay right after they married so they didn't have to freeze to death out in the cold or anything. When I asked Mom if that was true she didn't exactly deny it, but she made it sound more like she felt sorry for Dad because he was a country boy and he always wanted to be a city boy.
Embarrassing as it is for me to admit it I was gullible enough to believe Dad's stories – for a while anyway. After I got older I heard the real truth. I understood that some of what Dad told me was correct just he slanted it a little in his favor. You see, Dad was shy. In college he had two friends who sort of set him up to meet Mom at a party. Apparently, Mom did most of the talking. Dad must have liked her a lot because they ended up married.
If Dad had a special power, it was being quiet. When he did talk, you probably needed to listen because usually he was mad about something. Most of the time he let Mom do the talking, though. Mom seemed to be okay with that because she loved to talk.
It wasn't only Dad's stories I fell for. My sisters tricked me, too. Pretty much anyone I trusted took advantage of me. What did I know? I was easily duped.
When I was only six I still believed in a lot of things people lie about - including Santa, the Easter Bunny and most of the special offers advertised on Saturday morning cartoon TV cereal commercials. Brenda, my oldest sister who was the first person I knew so far who actually went by her given name as it was on her birth certificate, enjoyed being the source of my disappointment telling me whenever someone had lied to me. Whether it was done as a joke or not, it was not right to lie to a little kid – just saying.
Whenever Brenda made fun of me, my other older sister Linda, whose real name is Belinda, laughed and teased me because of how stupid I was. It was what older sisters were supposed to do to their baby brothers – at least to their thinking. Yes, revenge would come when I got older, but that's getting ahead of the story here.
Mom grew up an only child not too far from Lake Michigan and only a few minutes from Wisconsin. She lived in this really big house with a swimming pool in the backyard where just Gram and Gramps live now. Gramps was an executive of some kind who worked in one of the tall buildings in Chicago. Gram did a lot of charity work. To me it seemed like they had a lot of room for just two people, but I guess they didn't have to worry about where everyone was going to sleep whenever we came to visit them, which we did about once or twice every summer and usually for either Thanksgiving or Christmas.
Going there for visits was great, especially when we piled into the van and headed for the beach. Not that I complained, but I wasn't sure why it was necessary to go to the beach if all we were going to do was swim – which we could have done in the backyard in their swimming pool. The lake was more fun, I guess. There were other things to do there.
Oblivious to all the warnings about over exposure to the sun, especially when there was playing to be done, going to the beach meant sunburn. Spending an entire day out in the sun, even with sun block on, was extremely dangerous for me, due to my fair complexion. Mom used to say, I could walk past a picture of the sunset and get burnt. That wasn't far from the truth. She knew. I took after her having red hair, freckles and extremely white skin. Because I generally was outside whenever I played, I stayed in the shade as much as possible. Even so, wherever my skin was exposed turned red before, maybe eventually, turning tan.
One summer day when both Sandra and I were eight, my dad was going up to Chicago to fly out on a business trip to New York. Mom was driving him to the Midway Airport. Dad hated flying out of O'Hare because of the confusing, spaghetti-like freeway system around it – not that he ever drove when he had to go there. Mom served as his chauffer anytime he had to go anywhere in Chicago because she was from there originally. Somehow, despite all the things that changed about the city since she last lived there, Mom never seemed to get lost when she drove. Dad learned that a long time before I was born.
Other than taking Dad to the airport, there was nothing planned that day. Of course, when Mom asked if I wanted to go I was ready and rearing to go. Even at age eight, I understood Mom needed to take me along because my older sisters wouldn't pay proper attention to me in her absence. Brenda was thirteen so she was self-impressed at being a teenager – though just barely. Linda was ten, impressed in her own way at having reached double digits – which she claimed sort of made her like a teen, somehow. Neither of them paid a lot of attention to me, which was generally a good thing except for when Mom wanted them to watch me. I could die and they wouldn't know it until they came looking for me in response to Mom's car pulling into the driveway. To her credit Mom knew that. A trip to Chicago and back would take a huge chunk out of the middle of the day, around five hours, which was too long for her to leave me with my mostly evil sisters.
Mom didn’t like me hanging out at Sandra's house for most of the day either. Mom always worried I'd wear out my welcome. I asked Sandra's Mom about that and she told me I was like a part of the family. Family can wear out their welcome too, I suppose, just it takes longer. Except for the excitement of the idea of a road trip, I might have preferred staying behind just to be at a Sandra's house because she had some really cool things to do at her house, like all her video games, but Mom insisted in taking me along. That meant the trip there and back would take six hours because we would stop somewhere to eat and maybe have to stop a couple of times going and coming for me to use the restroom. Also, Mom hated driving alone, so having me to talk to was better than nothing.
For me, going anywhere was better than just hanging around our neighborhood. But since I planned everyday around spending time playing with Sandra, we kind of always had plans already. When I talked to her on the phone the night before, Sandra told me she was working on a special secret project. She hadn't told me what it was yet. So, not wanting to miss out on finding out what she had been working on, I asked if she could come along on the road trip. At least that way I would have her to talk to and do other things with on the way to and from the airport. Of course, my request started a chain reaction of questions beginning with my Dad asking, "Why?"
"Because I'm sure she'd like to go, too," I replied. Wasn't that obvious? What kid would refuse a road trip?
A minor discussion ensued. At the end of it Mom told me I needed to call to ask her for her parents' permission. It seemed silly to me. It wasn't like Sandra hadn't gone places with us before. I mean, getting permission once for something should be enough as long as nothing bad happened before, right? I knew better than to argue, though. As required, I called, except when Sandra's Mom answered the phone, I seized the opportunity and asked her directly.
"Can Sandra come with me to take my dad to the airport in Chicago?"
The result might be expected. Her mom yelled, asking Sandra if she wanted to go. Now, Sandra was kind of already on her way out the door to come to my house anyway, so I knew what the answer was before I heard her confirm it with her mom. Why was all that asking and answering necessary?
Maybe people just feel it's necessary to talk even if all they do is ask silly questions and receive equally stupid answers. To me, it was something my Mom could have answered with a simple, okay and been done with it. Now, since I've graduated to thinking something like an adult, I understand the necessity of letting Sandra's parents in on the plans, but back then, it seemed pretty silly to both Sandra and me.
There wasn't a big deal about Sandra tagging along for the ride or anything. Mom liked Sandra. Dad did too, but he never came right out and said it. Dad was friends with Sandra's dad. Our moms got along well too. Dad worried a little about me hanging out with a girl almost all the time, but he understood the situation. She lived a few doors down. The guys on my street were mostly younger or older. The few who were my age were not the kind I wanted to be around. For the most part, they weren't the sorts my mom and dad would approve of anyway. So, Sandra was my best - and pretty-much only - friend throughout that period of my life.
For both Sandra and me, the idea of going to Chicago for any reason was exciting. It was reason enough to make the otherwise dull trip up the Interstate. If you've never experienced a ride anywhere in the Midwest, let me explain. Flat and boring landscape with barns and silos here and there along with a few trees. When storms roll through and lightning strikes, it hits the tallest things. In the Midwest those things were trees, barns, silos, houses, or whatever was above the grass. Many times an overpass on the Interstate looked like a hill from a distance. Some places really tall towers carry electricity across the countryside and in others there were relatively new windmills that turned wind into electricity. Unfortunately birds flew into the spinning blades maiming or killing themselves.
Overall, in the countryside around where I grew up there was more 'nothing to see' than 'anything to do'. Without Sandra along, I might have fallen asleep while staring out the backseat window as the humdrum landscape passed by. The one or two interesting things to see along the way were exceptions Mom or Dad might have pointed out in the past to prevent me from missing them, but, considering I was eight, I had made the trip enough times that I was on my own as far sightseeing. Sandra felt the way as I did about the scenery. So, as we sat together in the back seat, mostly we talked to one another. That way Mom and Dad could pay attention to driving and their own conversation in the front seat and not be bothered with entertaining us.
Mom offered us coloring books and crayons for entertainment along the way. Dad handed us a legal pad and two pencils. But we were bored quickly with both and broke out our handheld games and went at it in head to head competition until motion sickness got the better of me. Settling back in the seat with a headache, I apologized to Sandra. She shrugged it off, saying she was tired of beating me anyway. I suggested we talk some more instead and for a while we did that until my headache went away.
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