Life at 12

Junior high school awaited me that summer of 1970, but there was a precursor event in June that allowed for a different avenue of expression. Like many things in life, this was just a case of seemingly random fate intervening in a strange way. I was riding my bike near the house when a car pulled up beside me.

“Hey Miller”. It was Jim Hale being driven by his mom, leaning out the passenger window. He was a guy that I had been in class with at Belle Point, but whom I wasn't friends with. “Come with me I'm going to band practice at the high school". I was surprised, but excited at the opportunity, and quickly rode back to ask my Mom, who as usual was more than happy to be rid of any kid for ANY period of time. When we arrived at the HS band hall, I met Mr. Garner, the Darby Junior High band teacher, who asked what instrument I would like to play. I sampled several he offered, and was able to get a pleasing sound out of a spiraling conch shell of an instrument he called a “french horn”.

Not only was it my first time playing it, I had never even seen one before. I found the 2 hour practice to be fun, and agreed to finish out the 4 weeks of lessons. This was the start of 3 years spent in Band, which gave me much of the basis for music theory that carried over into my adult life with songwriting.

Another new element in my life that summer was swimming. Although I could save myself from drowning before this stage, my crawl stroke at 12 finally gelled and swimming became fun. Coupled with the freedom that my bike gave me, I spent many weekdays at the outdoor Olympic-sized pool at Creekmore Park, which only cost 25¢ to get in, an amount that was easy to obtain by returning discarded soda bottles to the store 5¢ apiece (as a brief explanatory digression, all sugared beverages in that era were sold in glass bottles. To facilitate recycling of these, a deposit was charged per bottle when buying them from the stores in six-packs, and was added to the cost of the singles bought from vending machines. This incentive had largely by 1970 cured the blight of discarded bottles by the roadsides, but there were still enough lazy people leaving theirs for the picking that monetarily-strapped boys like myself could find at least 5 of them in short order). There was just one slight problem that my outdoor fun created. In 1970, the only effective sunblock available (Coppertone washed off easily) for swimming was zinc oxide, better known in our current era as Desitin or Boudreaux's Butt Paste. The substance would create a solid white film as a reflective block to the Sun's rays. While the classic application of this was to the nose, my melanin-deficient skin demanded a whole-body application. The powers-that-be of the park did not smile kindly upon such a liberal blanketing of the metallic paste however, and the one time that I showed up in my ghostly covering they summarily rejected my entrance. So I began showing up sans any protection, and after a few hours in the summer sun my skin would be broiled well-done, returning home a fire red, with the added bonus of a multitude of blisters erupting later that evening. I have a vague recollection of the pain, but it obviously wasn't enough to scare me off, for as soon as it had somewhat healed, I would be back at the pool with the same predictable results.

I remember Mom taking me to the Dr. in desperation for help with the serious burns I was developing, and I recall this great pearl of wisdom - “He's a redhead – he should stay out of the sun”. He did write a note for me to give to the pool management stating that I should be allowed to wear a T-shirt, but when I tried to submit it they simply refused to bend the rules. As I rode away from Creekmore that day, I didn't realize that even though I would live in Fort Smith until 18, this would be the last time I would ever swim there. I guess the accumulated suffering finally became too much for me. I have marveled at making it into my mid-50's without developing terminal skin cancer, since the DNA in my skin cells must have mutated many times over from the radiation. When the modern sunblocks first came on the market in the late 70's, it re-opened the world of summer sunshine to me, like a vampire allowed to finally walk in the daylight. I know all the downsides of the substances, but for me they have been godsends.

School began at Darby in late August. Like all of us, the anticipated freedom of going from class to class every hour seemed a seductive reality that of course disappointed. We had 5 minutes to go from one period classroom to the next, and this entailed returning to our lockers which often were far away from our previous class, depositing those books then getting the next classes texts. The modern backpack had not yet come into vogue, and carrying a “book bag” was considered a seriously uncool move, so our arms bulked up carrying those items between class and locker. Darby had just finished an updating and built an entire new wing which contained almost all of the 7^th grade classes. The liberal arts classes were held in a new-for-then concept called “pods, where a large space was subdivided by retractable curtains, such that lessons could either be given to a large group over the PA system, or broken down into traditional 30-person sections.

My homeroom teacher was Ms. Beneau, a 20-something young woman who was both cool and hot, so I along with every other guy she taught had a huge crush on her. Discipline in those days was a tad different than in the era of “Cult of the Child”. Nowadays, I surmise that if one acts up in school they are given medals for good behavior along with extra dessert and a hug. The 1970's way, well... coaches on their off-periods were assigned to roam through the pods, and were given carte blanche to handle things in their own inimitable way, which as any who are of my generation would affirm was pretty uniformly the following: 

1) Yank supposed offender out of seat by scruff of neck. 

2) Slam said offending 12 year old's body against the wall like a cop ready to frisk a subject, except instead they would 

3) Pull out their oversized paddles, drilled with holes for greater stinging and begin to absolutely TEAR ass up. 

Now I had always been, with the exception of Faggy Frank's provocation from 5^th grade, the opposite of troublemaker. One rainy afternoon while Ms Beneau was expounding on some or another facet of US history, someone passed a note which piqued the teacher, and she gave her standard head nod identifying the culprit to the coach patrolling the room at the time. Suddenly though, it was MY neck being yanked out of the seat and spread-eagled against the wall before my mind could mount a protest. I could feel the WHOOSH of the back swing, and my bitterness at the injustice at once again being punished for something I didn't so was washed out by my realization that I was going to cry. Not that this was unusual – EVERYBODY cried, save the psychopaths-in-training who sat at the back of the class, amusing themselves by seeing how far they could stick safety pins into their arms before their audience members passed out. But SHE – my teacher who I obsessed about making love to on a desert island - SHE would see me cry and that was one injustice I couldn't take.

“NO, NOT HIM – JIMMY!” her voice interrupted my imminent doom. Without a word of apology, the coach relaxed his hold on me and swooped over to the real offender. Shaken but with unmolested buttocks, I regained my seat. There and then, my obsession with Donna Beneau ended. If she could so carelessly throw me to the lions, she no longer could be my future Queen. I would have to find others to fuel my nighttime fantasies.

My relationships with coaches were only slightly more positive during actual PE class. I was saddled with the unfortunate fate of having one Danny Henderson as my football coach. Though I easily made the team, Henderson made every day of practice miserable. You never did things right – you only were ignored or you were blamed. When the latter, the feedback was powerful and visceral: screaming in your face, kicking you in the butt, or his favorite grabbing your face mask twisting it and tossing you to the ground. Now this behavior today would be considered abusive and not allowed, but in that day it seemed to be the norm, and their was no avenue of protest or intervention. The season bubbled along, the team went 5-5, and in this my last year of organized tackle football I actually had some good moments, a fumble recovery and some sacks of the quarterback. Henderson reluctantly picked me for the all-star team, an intersection of the best players from the four 7^th grade teams, less out of regard for my talents and more because he hated his other options even more. He had given me the moniker “Big Red” which of course I absolutely hated but endured in seething silence. During the week of practice for the game against the rival junior high team, he wasn't happy with my inability to get through the blocks to make tackles, so he screamed in my ear “GAWDDAMMIT BIG RED, YOU BETTER FUCKING MAKE THE TACKLE OR YOU'RE OFF THE TEAM!” My adrenalin coursed, and on the next snap like Moses parting the Red Sea I separated the center and guard's blocks and propelled myself like a torpedo at the QB. I hit him before he could even hand the ball off and impaled him to the ground. His scream told us something wasn't right as he was holding his arm off the ground. I had accidentally broken our best player's arm 2 days before the championship game. Henderson went apoplectic on me, ignoring the fact that he was the one who had inspired me to the effort in the first place. He sent me to the showers early and I assumed from the dirty looks I got from the other players that my time was done.

But on game day, I suited out, got on the bus, and was on the sidelines but not expecting to play. Unexpectedly the center was hurt early on, and Henderson's eyes scoured the bench. “Big Red you're playing center” he commanded. I ran out onto the field buckling my chin strap thinking “what do I do?” because I had never played the position before. To my credit, I suppose, I made all the snaps without creating fumbles, but the backup QB was terrible and we could not find a way to score. As I walked off the field after the last play, I had not a remote notion that this was the last time I would wear pads and feel the exhilaration of competing like that. But I had grown weary of the psychological abuse that I had already endured and I surmised correctly it would only amp up as the stakes got higher.

Did I mention Mom was pregnant?. It came as a surprise to me too, since she didn't tell us until she was far along, as I recall just as school began. Liz was starting 1^st grade, Henry and Nancy were still toddlers, and Dad had decided to go to school; in this instance it was a waste-water treatment program in Camden at the southern border of the state. This meant that he was gone for two weeks at a time, since he could only afford to make the drive every other weekend. That left me as man of the house for practical purposes, but again it was the steady presence of my grandma that kept the ship afloat. I still have a memory of my 1^st concert during the Christmas season. I often brought my French horn home with me to practice, which was problematic since it was bulky, weighed quite a bit, and I usually also had homework with me as well. My feet were my only locomotion between home and school and I lived almost 2 miles away. So the night of the concert I implored the family to come which meant 2 adults, me, 3 children and the horn being crammed into a cab. But it was worth the difficulty, I found playing in the Darby auditorium, which was a grand relic from the early 1900's when it was built, complete with balcony and opera boxes to be an acoustic wonder and I loved the applause from the audience for my solo on “O Holy Night." Our relative poverty faded for the evening and for a small slice of time I felt normal and accomplished.

William Alan (Billy) was born on the 1^st of December. By now the routine of adding another (at least, thankfully, the last) child to the Miller clan was a well-greased path, so I have few memories of his first year; he was just another in a long line of diapers, bottles, and colicky cries during the night. It is in retrospect that, regardless of her inability to control the already-unmanageable size of our family, it took tremendous effort to glue together a household with kids of 6, 3, 2 and then a newborn as the cherry on top. It was no wonder that whatever vestiges of relationship I had with her became a memory. There was an unstated expectation that at the age of 12 I had become a de facto adult and was on my own. She stopped even asking me where I was going, when I would be back, and even if I was coming back. Invisible Bob.

This was the year of my ulcer, a tiny hole rotting away at my stomach lining, and with it a pain that was almost crippling. The diagnosis was to me almost as bad as the ailment itself – drinking a large, nauseating cup of what seemed like liquid chalk. After the problem was confirmed on x-ray, all the Dr. had to offer was for me to drink milk when the attacks happened. This was at least a decade before the discovery that a bacterium was responsible for most stomach ulcers, and a simple course of antibiotics cured the ill. Instead, I was a child of the then-1970's and dairy products were the ineffectual treatment.

Because of the pain and the testing, I missed a huge swath of days from school, and found myself playing catchup when I returned. In my English class, my regular teacher had also been sidelined, in her case by surgery so she was out for a few months. I had made the dutiful rounds to each teacher asking for the makeup work I had missed, but somehow in the parade of substitutes the assignments for that class weren't given, and when the 3^rd nine weeks report cards were handed out, I discovered I had been given a “F”. Shocked, I asked the substitute after class why I had gotten such a low grade and he told me I had not turned in 2 assignments. I of course tried to argue, but he told me I'd have to take it up with my regular teacher when she came back. In tears, I walked out of the class and across the 2nd floor breezeway that connected the newer part of Darby from the older building. An irrational impulse grabbed me and I climbed to the top of the iron railing ready to jump off. My identity, as crushed by my reality as it was, had been positively bolstered only by my intelligence, and the measure of that was the report cards that I brought home with only “A”'s and a rare “B”. The idea of showing my Mom a seeming failure, even though in retrospect I realize that she really wouldn't have given a shit about it anyway as tsunami-ed as she was by her life, was at that moment too much to bear. This was not the last time that I would feel that crazy desire to escape it all, but thankfully a deeper-seated sense of self brought me down that day.

By the end of the school year, I had righted the ship to an overall “C” in English, and fared much better in all my other classes. Dad finished the waste-water treatment program, came back to Fort Smith, then announced that he wasn't going to spend his life dealing with shit, and jumped into a job as a cab driver. Alrighty then. That was yet another piece of Toby's World that I would never get a satisfying answer from. We were approaching 2 years at the duplex, which of course meant that it was time to pack our stuff like thieves in the night. This time, the outcome was bizarrely different. Toby had convinced a guy who was going through a divorce to rent us his place while the proceedings were taking place, which given that the guy was in 1971 terms well-off was going to take a bit. I was floored when I saw the new house. It was a relative mansion compared to the shitholes we had lived in before. I had my own bedroom, the house had a downstairs game room complete with pool table, and the property sat on a cliff out-looking all of south Fort Smith. It was literally Hillbillies go to Hollywood time. There were times I pinched myself as my 13^th birthday came near: ignoring the reality that Dad was bringing home maybe $30 a day from driving cabs, it gave me the illusion, once again, that THINGS ARE LOOKING UP. Next installment: Balloon of hope pops.