Life at 11

This is one I have been avoiding; I knew from the beginning of this project that this would be one of the hard years to archive (not as though there were any easy ones). This was the year that I lost illusions, had my full-fledged sexual awakening, ran away from home and, though it would not be the last time, considered killing myself. I became a brief football hero, had at least 10 fistfights, joined the Boy Scouts, learned to roller-skate and ride a bike, smoked my first cigarette, saw my first real-life nude girl, had my first job, stopped my mother from stabbing my Dad with a knife, endured the shame of neighbors being awakened by the police coming to our house subsequent to said encounter, and somehow survived the coldest winter I have to date endured in a house with inadequate heating. I’m tired just summing it up.

The summer of ’69 may have been awesome for those

attending Woodstock or getting to play footloose hippies, but for adolescent me, that era was much less fun and games. Baby Nancy proved to be a bit of a screamer, and the time soaked up with her and toddler James Henry made Mom persona non grata for me. Liz had attached herself to Maw-Maw, and since Dad was still rapped up in the dying throes of YES stamps, it was a world of one that I inhabited. 6^th grade began in that desultory manner that only non-air conditioned schools of that era could – large fans blowing from the corners, the teacher screaming, unsuccessfully, to be heard over them, and sweat soaking our cotton clothing. 

An interesting distraction was available though, I had been

made an officer of the crossing guard (another relic of the past, the kids empowered to protect street crossings instead of adults), and it was my job as lieutenant along with my compatriot captain to make the rounds of all the crossing sites and entry doors where guards were stationed to insure no one entered the school without permission. It was my first taste of authority and I must admit to liking it, maybe even more than a bit. We had an equipment room where the flags and bright arm bands we wore were stored along with rubber rain gear. It happened that this would be a rainy and stormy year, and I still remember the tactile sensation of the wet boots and slicks that we hung to dry after enduring deluges. This would always make us minutes late to class which I why I suppose they picked the smartest students for the positions.

It was just a few weeks into fall when I was blindsided by our latest surreptitious move out of a house where we were ostensibly in arrears several months. I hated leaving the relatively spacious house at 618, and when I saw what we were exchanging it for at 1101 on the same street, it was almost instant depression. It was a duplex, two-bedroom, with small rooms, small kitchen and bathroom, and just a feeling of being dirty no matter how many times we swept and mopped the floors. Even worse, the washer and dryer that Mom had been so happy with had to be given up since there were no connections. This put us back into the matrix of having to trundle the dirty clothes to a laundromat, an

odyssey that would often occupy half of one day on the weekends.

I was not happy about the change, nor did it have a positive effect on Mom and Dad’s relationship, as their conflicts began to amp up to levels I had never experienced before. Maw-Maw would often have to leave the bed in the backroom, climbing over both Henry and Nancy, her latest nighttime companions, then navigating past the separate twin beds of Liz and mine (yes, three beds in a small bedroom, and now I live in a 3500 square foot house. Life is often ironic) just to drag her then 67 year old self down the hallway where Toby and Janet were having animated discussions on his inability to: A. Earn money; B. Stop impregnating her; and C. Stop sharing his penis with other women. More often than not, she was able to be an effective mediator to defuse the conflicts, as much as I could tell from my position of burying my head in the pillow wishing I could just disappear. One night in November, Maw-Maw lost her magic touch with getting them off their ledges, and my pillow could not block it out. Out of desperation, I suppose, I went down the hallway. The living room was dark, I saw Dad’s silhouette in front of me, clad only in underwear, yelling taunts in the mocking tone he used to goad Mom into abandoning her autistic coldness and engage him in word wars. The came a blood-curdling scream from the kitchen and Mom came around the corner like a wraith in a white nightgown with a knife raised in her hand. Instead of recoiling in fear, this just amped Toby up.

“You don’t have the guts to do it” he taunted. Without thinking, not being as convinced that she wouldn’t plunge the knife into his neck, I placed myself between them. “Kill me then” I said, and I’m sure at the time I meant it, because the prospect of the misery of any given night turning into this insanity had finally pushed that heretofore-unknown button within me labeled “FUCK THIS SHIT!!!”.

That moment for me is still frozen in time, Mom with the knife poised over her head, Maw-Maw in the background looking on in horror, the echo of their screams still reverberating in the tiny living room. That broke the cycle. Mom dropped the knife and collapsed into a heap of sobs and tears on the couch. It was just a minute later that the police arrived; summoned no doubt by our neighbors on the other side of the wall, and all of the subsequent memories are hidden from me. To this day, I do question whether she would have done it if I hadn’t stepped between them, and speculate on how all of our destinies would have taken a different vector if I hadn’t. Like so many other events yet to be told of my life, my decision had nothing to do with logic, it was purely instinctual and as such I can only accept that this and so many other happenings are what have led me to be sitting at this keyboard in the first place.

To forget the turmoil at home, I joined Boys Club football for the first time in 3 years. Again stuck on the line because of my girth, I took out my frustrations in the hitting drills and practices, and I became a defensive line starter which in my estimation was far superior to being a blocker. As the season started, I made my fair share of tackles and found to my happiness that there was a literal bonus for my performance, a “pay-for-play” plan. Our coach was a fairly wealthy owner of a local car dealership, and would hand out money at the end of games for tackles behind the line of scrimmage, and fumbles and interceptions recovered. A game midway through the season was at Paris about 40 miles to the east which we traveled to by the now-unacceptable method of piling into open truck beds. The black players on the team must have been particularly hungry that night because try as I might I could not get to anyone first for a loss. We were behind late in the game, and they had driven into our end of the field and looked in good shape to run out the clock. On a snap with a few minutes left I fought through a block only to see that my teammate on the other side was about to sack the quarterback. The QB in desperation tried to pitch the ball, but it was batted the opposite direction, landing perfectly in my arms. I took off for our end zone with a head of steam, while the Paris squad was going the other direction. Slow though I was, my head start let me get near the goal line before someone caught up to me and took my legs out. The feeling of making such a huge play was exhilarating, the joy was increased as we scored the next play and held on to win the game, and was capped off with the $5 I received for nabbing the fumble. We stopped at a drive-in on the way back, and I felt justified in having an extra hamburger and milk shake with my reward.

A classmate that October asked me to visit his Boy Scout

   meeting which was held at a church just a few blocks from my house. I did, and enjoyed it enough to join, somehow getting Mom to agree to the $1 weekly dues. This brought me into my first experience with outdoors life and camping, skills from which have remained through my life. The troop leader’s son Mark, my squad leader, was 13 and a bit on the wild side. He had a garage hangout that he had installed a stereo in, along with psychedelic posters and accompanying black lights. He would occasionally invite us to hangout with him there, and while we listened to the Beatle’s “Sgt. Pepper’s” I was offered cigarettes which I usually turned down because I had already had my fill of what I thought was a disgusting habit due to my Dad’s constant smoking. But one day my curiosity prompted me to do it. I barely inhaled, yet I still felt woozy and out of sorts. I couldn’t imagine what drove people to do it, and it would be another 6 years before I tried again. Most other elements of Boy Scouts provided a positive distraction though. I worked on and achieved several merit badges, and the weekend outings were a welcome escape from Miller Hell. One of the other squad leaders, Mike, had a motorcycle which all of us envied of course. I remember looking up to him and dreaming that my life could be a fraction of his. But I was shocked and saddened just a few years later to hear of his death on the bike. Not all that glitters ends up as gold, obviously.

One night after a meeting, one of the guys suggested we go with him to his girlfriend’s house. Her name was Nancy, and she was the object of great adoration and not a little bit of lust on the part of every guy in school, as her face and body were mature far beyond her 12 years. We went to the porch; one of her family answered and told us she was taking a bath and to come in to wait as they settled back down to watch TV. Where we were standing was directly in line with the bathroom at the end of a hallway, recessed so her parents couldn’t see. The door opened, and Nancy came out covered in just a towel. When she saw the five of us staring at her, she began a provocative tease with moving the towel, then suddenly dropped the whole thing, allowing us full-frontal vision for a brazen five seconds until she ducked into her bedroom. Those moments would be replayed countless times in my memory, and doubtless in that of the others who witnessed that pubescent miracle.

Across the street, a classmate named Ricky lived with his Dad and step mom. It was a solidly-middle class house in contrast to the somewhat dilapidated housing on the rest of the block. We began hanging out and developed something of a friendship. One day, Ricky asked me if I knew how to “beat it”. I didn’t even understand what he meant, but in his garage he gave a demonstration that left no doubt. He encouraged me to join him, and so in the semi-darkness there I reached my first conscious climax. There were no overtones of anything else between us; it was more in the vein of “look at this remarkable thing I discovered”. We never did that together again, but I quickly became a fanatic devotee of self-abuse, and though I felt that perhaps I was unusual in that regard I would learn that this is simply the norm for teenagers of both sexes.

Ricky loved to roller-skate and had me tag along with him.

Though I took many falls at first, I eventually became competent enough that I could join the couple’s skate where the girls would line up and you would skate up and offer your hand, hoping they would assent. I surely had rejections, and that stung, but I stayed consistent and finally a few girls took my offer and tooled around the rink with me. The feel of a girl’s hand in mine might as well have been third base. Other boys in my circle were faster – Ricky bragged that he had made out, gotten hand jobs and had explored under a girls panties, and Nancy’s boyfriend said they’d gone all the way several times. That all seemed unapproachable for me; I wanted to just have a kiss. If I had known that milestone was still years off into the future, I might have been even more depressed than I was.

School was as always underwhelming for me, but the social mix became more volatile with the explosion of hormones. Simple conflicts turned into wars, and I wasn’t able to keep my peaceful persona alive in that jungle. There were at least ten fights that I was involved in, 3 of which were severe. The first was one where I tried to play rescuer for a 3^rd grader who was having the snot beat out of him by a fellow 6^th grader. I pulled the bully off, who turned his attention to me. The younger kid ran off, leaving the two of us to be nabbed by a teacher and sent to the principal, who lit up our asses with her oversized paddle. The next was with my on-again, off-again friend Dennis, whom I genuinely liked but he would burn hot and cold due to no act of mine. One afternoon at softball I was covering second base, he was running from first and dove headlong into me, causing pain and scratches.

“Meet me after school” he snarled.

“Why, what did I do?” I genuinely was bewildered.

“You know” he snapped, and spun away. I was to find out later that someone had started some shit by saying that I told them he was a faggot, our code word for homosexual back then. I of course had said no such thing, but Dennis’ fury was palpable, and I sought to take a back way to home after school. It didn’t work – Dennis, along with a crowd of about 20 blood-thirsty onlookers blocked my path just a block away from my house.

I shed tears, not of fear or of pain, but because of the injustice that I was being put through. He threw the first punch, and it was on. We literally rolled down the hill end over end fists flying at each other. Across the street from my house, there was a four-foot wide stump in the ground next to the curb. When we reached that spot, Dennis connected with a punch that knocked me back, my head hit the stump, and there was nothing but blackness. The next image I recall is Mom screaming at everyone as I literally saw stars circling around her. My first concussion, but not even the last one involving that stump. The last memorable fight that year involved my neighbor Ricky. We had gone to some free event at the auditorium and were walking back. Somehow a disagreement began as we walked past a vacant lot and fisticuffs ensued. This went on for at least 20 minutes until we both were so exhausted we just quit. After we gathered ourselves, we continued walking back just as if nothing had happened until curiously at the next vacant lot it started again, and absurdly for a third time would be repeated yet again at another open space. I don’t think we ever figured out what the conflict was about, but in retrospect it’s clear that adolescent angst and testosterone surges were the causation.

For that Christmas, I finally received what I’d been asking for so many times – a bicycle. In short order, I learned how to balance myself and a new world of freedom expanded for me. Ricky and I liked to race down the side street and then curve opposite directions onto South 20^th. One time, I miscalculated and went into the turn too fast, hitting the curve, and my body flew over the handlebars with my head landing on my old nemesis, the stump. Unconsciousness part 2, with again my Mom and circling stars being my greeting on my return from never-never land. Those were significant concussions, but they would pale with the big one to come years later.

A man in a van with the imprint of our local paper, the Southwest Times-Record, saw me riding my bike one day and asked if I’d like to make some money. That was music to my ears, and it didn’t take much cajoling of Mom to get her to agree. I was given a sack that hung from my front handlebars, and it was my job 7 days a week to take the stack of papers that were dropped on my porch, roll them up, rubberband them and then load the sack before taking off on the route, which stretched about 20 blocks.

Though that part was hard enough, the collection part was

ridiculous. I had to make several trips to each house to collect the paltry few dollars the paper cost at that time, and when you totaled up all of my efforts, I was making maybe 25 cents per hour of work. Dad, who had gotten drafted to take me on the route in the car especially on Sundays when the weight of the paper made it impossible to throw all of them without coming back to reload, told the manager after about 6 futile weeks that I was done. I think I had $25 to show for all of that, but a life lesson in pocket for sure.

Immediately after Christmas, we were socked in with the worst cold snap I have seen to this date. There was close to a foot of snow and ice that, because of the steady below-freezing temps that lasted for weeks, never melted. Walking to school was like skating a mountain uphill on the way in, and then dangerously downhill coming back. Still performing my duties as crossing guard, I forgot my ear muffs one morning and after that they stayed frozen the entire day, only grudgingly thawing out with what felt like needles shooting through them. Our heating system at school was barely adequate, but it was a hot desert compared to our duplex. The gas furnace was undersized even for our small place, windows were single-paned and leaky and insulation was non-existent. The ambient temp inside couldn’t have been more than 50 for a solid month. We stayed curled up in blankets and shivering, especially in the nights. Finally as February began, there was at least a small break rising to the 40’s and 50’s which felt almost tropical compared to our Artic January.

Spring brought back the freedom of riding my bike all over town. On weekdays after school, I would first check in at home then ride to the library, often returning with 10 or more books that I would devour within the week then turn those in to check out more. On weekends, a favorite place

of mine was Creekmore Park, with picnic benches tucked in the trees where I loved to park myself to read books then take naps on sunny afternoons. A great hiding spot I found was in a large culvert that ran under the entrance road. Graffiti on the inner walls told me I wasn’t the first to discover it, but happily for me all the times I retreated there I was the lone occupant.

As the school year ended, I exerted my leadership abilities for the first time in cajoling classmates to join me in creating a bike club. The idea was that we would ride enmasse in various functions the town sponsored, such as parades. The annual rodeo parade was at the end of May, and so I wrote a letter to the chairman using my best penmanship, to which I received a nicely-worded but definite “No”. Not deterred by this rejection, I rode downtown to the offices of the chairman, confidently strode in to his secretary and was rewarded with an audience with the boss, who politely yet firmly rejected the notion again. I left shaken that I had thrown my best precocious sales pitch at him and yet did not succeed. When I told the other guys about the turndown, they decided that a bike club wasn’t that cool after all, and so my first attempt at being the straw that stirred the drink went to the wayside.

A big highlight of early summer was supposed to be State Boys Scout camp, a week-long excursion far away from Fort Smith and its attendant problems. I had briefed my parents on it beginning at the first of the year, and had elicited what I thought was a promise that I would be able to. I remember that it was $75, which at that time was considerable but doable for most. The Millers were of course never to be counted among the most. As the time drew near, I packed my bag carefully, got my immunization, and waited. The morning of, I asked Dad to take me to the church. He exploded “I don’t have the money!" I burst into tears, feeling shame that I would be the only member of the troop left behind. I sat on my steps and watched the bus drive past a block away. I was overcome with anger about our constant poverty, and ventilated on both of my parents before walking off without a plan. I ended up at the culvert, and felt an irrational desire to bang my head against the wall to end the constant pain that was a background of my life. A calmer voice within me held sway and kept my cranium intact. Darkness began to cast shadows, and though I had been determined to run away from home, logic informed me that there were simply no options for me anywhere but with my family, dysfunctional though it may have been. I returned with my tail between my legs, received the silent treatment from the parents, and wolfed down mac-and-cheese like it was steak. My 11^th year marked the end of elementary school, the end of innocence, and sadly the end of idealistic hope for things ever being better as long as I was trapped with my family.