Family Ties

 

CHAPTER TEN

FAMILY TIES

During the time of the Cuban missile crisis, the cold war reached its peak. Tensions between the United States and Russia ran high, as Soviet missiles were installed in Cuba, and President Kennedy threatened retaliation. The uneasy fear of nuclear war had lurked in the background since the early fifties, but now it appeared to be a real possibility, and the issue seemed to be on everyone's lips.

It was not surprising then that one night I found myself in a vivid dream that dealt with warfare. The scene was the devastated business section of a city in which a battle had just taken place. The mood was somber, and the light was dim as if the sun were about to set - the light darkened even more by the shadows cast by the tall buildings. Now, after the fighting had raged all day, the streets were quiet, with only some wisps of smoke and gaping holes in the brickwork testifying to the destruction that had been wrought by the artillery shells. The battle zone had moved beyond the city, leaving its pitiful residue of dead and wounded soldiers strewn about the streets. Some were motionless, some stirred slightly, and some moaned weakly or emitted a faint cry for help.

Then, among this human wreckage, there appeared a lone figure dressed in a uniform which, on closer inspection, appeared to be a Red Cross nurse's outfit. She moved quietly but deftly, with her bag of medical supplies, from one of the wounded to another - cleaning and dressing the wounds of one, administering a pain killing injection to another, offering a drink of water to a third, along with a word of compassion and encouragement - making no distinction as to which uniform the soldier wore. As I watched this scene, the dream camera moved closer, and it suddenly struck me that this figure of mercy seemed vaguely familiar. Then as the camera zoomed in even more, I saw that it was Betty! At that point I awoke.

I lay there in the darkness for a long time pondering the dream. Of course, Betty had never been in a war zone, although she did receive her nurse's training on a federal wartime program. I decided that the point of the dream was that she was the kind of person that achieved heroic stature in caring for others. She would have been that angel of mercy in the dream, had she been in that war zone situation. It seemed to be the nature of her psychological make up. In some way, I had always known that she was like that; but it was a kind of subliminal knowledge - not a conscious recognition of the fact. I think that the dream was trying to bring that unconscious knowledge into a conscious awareness. And I can honestly say that, from that night on, I saw her in a totally new light.

There is an interesting theory, espoused by some reincarnationists, that asserts that each soul, prior to birth into a body, actually chooses its family, hopefully in such a way as to optimize its opportunities for achieving its eternal goals. If there is anything to that theory, then I think that I made the perfect choice - although, to judge from my childhood, one would never have guessed it. In many ways it seemed that I was not a true member of the family. In fact, according to my mother, people sometimes jokingly spoke of me as "the little Greek that was left on the doorstep" - in reference both to my appearance and to my other differences from the rest of the family.

As I developed from infancy into childhood, home became a place to eat and sleep, a place to go to get mercurochrome and a bandage on a cut, or to lie quietly and read when none of my playmates were available. I think my parents desired a closer relationship with me, but my close relationships were with my playmates, simply because we shared similar interests. For some reason I didn't feel the need, at the time, for a closer bond with my parents.

In that respect Betty and I could hardly have been more different. Whereas I would never have shared my inner thoughts with my parents, Betty accepted Mom as a close confidante, and they would have long, often emotional, talks - times when I would be sent up to my bedroom or out of the house. Their bond became so close that it existed on a subliminal level. Even when Betty was older and was no longer living at home, Mom usually knew when she was undergoing a period of stress, through some kind of psychic sixth sense. I remember clearly the first time that Mom told me that she felt that Betty was upset about something. She seemed to be carrying a weight on her own shoulders that day. It turned out that Betty was experiencing considerable anxiety over a critical chemistry exam that she had to pass in order to complete her nurse's training.

My mind was filled with fantasy, both in my playing and in reading fairy tales, adventure stories, and comic books; and as I grew older I became interested in puzzles, scientific experiments, and esoteric ideas. But Betty was more interested in people and relationships. When we visited relatives, if the family included a girl near her age, the two of them would sit and talk, sometimes for hours; but if there were a boy my age, I saw him merely as a playmate. I suppose that's why I remember so little about my cousins and second cousins.

I'm sure that my presence must have been a thorn in her side, just as Gerald's presence often put a damper on everything that Billy and I planned. To make matters worse, I developed the habit of seeking out hiding places, mostly behind large pieces of furniture, where I could enjoy the warmth and comfort of being at home, yet effectively be absent - with the result that often no one knew whether I was present or not. But I hid strictly for the purpose of protecting my privacy and never paid any attention to the conversations around me. I never found out what all those long conversations between my mother and Betty were about; but I guessed that they had to with her schoolwork, her personal relationships, and the stress of working at her first job - a summertime position at Grants, a five-and-dime store in downtown Roanoke.

As children Betty and I got along without too much conflict by staying away from each other as much as possible. But that was impossible when we were sitting in the back seat of the car on a trip to the farm, or on one of those interminable Sunday afternoon drives, when we would get on each other's nerves, and Mom's as well. With disparate ages and interests, it is not surprising that we seemed to grow up almost as strangers. That fact didn't hit me until I had that revealing dream that set me to thinking about it - and then I realized how much I had missed.

I suspect that she thought that I was spoiled; and in at least one respect she was right. Very little was expected of me in the way of household chores. Only rarely did I contribute even to cleaning up my room. But I was by no means the center of attention in the family. I had received enough of that from Nandy and "Maw" Wiley's boarders in my infancy. As my relationships with other children developed, I established in my mind a wall between adulthood and childhood, and subsequently felt embarrassed and ill at ease if any adult attempted to breach that barrier. Nevertheless, both of my parents left their influence on me, not by teaching or preaching, but more by setting an example.

I can't recall that my mother ever complained about any of her household work. She seemed to approach everything she did as if it were a craft rather than a chore - whether it was ironing, cooking, canning, sewing, knitting, quilting, or gardening. I would often ask to help her in the kitchen with simple tasks, like turning the handle on the meat grinder or dicing the ingredients for potato salad, because the atmosphere there was irresistible - with the variety of food aromas, the chance to sample the various dishes and to lick the frosting off the eggbeaters. She had the ability to prepare a dozen or more dishes and keep them all in exactly the right stage so that everything was ready just at the right time - seemingly without effort. As far back as I can remember she was a good cook, but her skills continued to increase even in her later years, when retirement provided more time to experiment with new recipes, and the many church covered dish suppers and family get-togethers provided the motivation.

She seemed reluctant to talk openly about deep feelings, but I found out that she was a romantic at heart. One of the few interests that we had in common was reading, and she mentioned some of her favorite books - novels by Gene Stratton-Porter. I read two or three of them and found that they were unabashed love stories, full of innocent romance and idealism.

At the time it didn't seem strange to me that, although she only had a sixth-grade education, she enjoyed reading as a pastime. For a short time she subscribed to a book club and even read a science fiction novel, which happened to be a book-of-the-month. But after that her reading became more confined to popular home and women's magazines, and to Bible commentaries. She may have been influenced by Nandy's predilection for reading Bible studies. He had spent a goodly portion of his Raleigh goods income on commentaries, at the time when I exhausted my weekly allowance on comic books.

In any case this interest led to her agreeing to teach an adult Sunday-School class, and for many years that became one of her primary activities. She must have been reasonably successful in this role, because she held her own with the many class members, some of whom had two, or even three, times as many years of schooling as she had. When her age and health finally dictated that she turn the position over to someone else, she often found herself back in the role as a substitute or alternate.

In my early school years she attended PTA meetings, but she made no effort to "push" me in my schoolwork. I was slightly surprised that she made friends with some of the teachers and other parents and, for a while, incorporated the PTA into her social life.

But, even before I was old enough to go to school, she decided, for some reason unknown to me, to take a Red Cross class. She learned some sterilization and bandaging methods, but the most interesting skill that she was taught was how to make a homemade hot water bottle. This rather curious technique involved removing the top part of a Mason jar with a clean break. She had watched the teacher accomplish this feat by wrapping a thin kerosene-soaked rag around the jar, igniting the rag to heat the desired break line, and then plunging the jar into cold water. She brought all of the equipment for this tricky project out to the back yard behind the boarding house and followed the instructions carefully; but her first attempt yielded a terribly jagged edge, much to her disgust. But she didn't give up and eventually managed a fairly clean break. At the time I thought it was some kind of fascinating game, but since then I have often wondered what the neighbors must have thought about that strange activity.

As a mother she had the right instincts and always knew what to do in a crisis situation. Once when I was playing behind the boarding house I stepped on a rusty nail sticking up through a small plank. I limped and hopped toward the house with the nail and plank attached to my foot, screaming not so much in pain as in terror at the thought of extracting the rusty nail. When Mom saw what had happened she tried to calm me down, but I wouldn't let her touch that plank. She told me that she had to hold my foot just to see how bad the problem was. But as soon as I looked away, she struck the plank a sharp blow; and in that fraction of a second the object of my fears vanished. When I looked down, the plank lay on the ground with its bloody nail, and my foot hardly hurt at all; but I cried anyway, at the thought of what had happened.

She was interested in personal relationships, and gradually accumulated a considerable knowledge of psychology, not by any formal study but through observation and insight. One day in her later years, she and I sat discussing a family that we had both known for years, and she offered some comments on an ongoing source of friction in the marriage. Some time later when I was studying the writings of Jung on the subject of projection, it hit me that it was just this phenomenon that she had been describing to me. She had discovered the principle on her own.

In at least one way I proved to be a disappointment to her. Although she didn't push me academically, she did push me in church activities. She seemed to be most pleased when I was reciting a poem in a pageant, being presented a prize for reciting the catechism, or playing a hymn accompaniment on the piano. I think she had visions of my becoming a preacher, or at least a church pianist. But as I grew older and more introverted, I became more uncomfortable with appearing in front of an audience, and developed severe cases of stage fright. After I gave a recitation at a Washington's Birthday program in junior high school, during which my knees literally knocked together, I decided that public performance was not for me.

I can't recall a single instance of my father ever lecturing me or arguing with me over anything. When I was a child, our relationship was simple: if I broke the rules, I got spanked. But the rules were few, and I enjoyed great freedom throughout my childhood years. Although he didn't preach to me, his influence was strong, but unperceived. He had smoked a pipe when I was an infant, but he gave it up when I was about three years old because he thought it might be a harmful influence. Nevertheless, I can remember his shaking the ashes from his pipe into the coal scuttle that resided beside the heatrola in the boarding house living room. He didn't resume his pipe smoking until late in life, when he tried to keep his weight under control by smoking after meals as a substitute for dessert. I thought my mother would possibly have been upset by this decision, but she appeared to be delighted. One reason was that it gave her ideas for birthday and Christmas presents for Pop, who had always been hard to buy for; and subsequently, on each gift occasion, he was sure to receive a new pipe, pipe holder, or pouch of a favorite blend of tobacco.

He didn't lecture me about laziness, but he complained long and often about young men that were hired to work with him but would shortly resign because they were too "sorry" to put in a full day's work. He also attempted to instill the work ethic in me in other ways. When we were at the farm he would sometimes get me to help with the work, even if it only meant carrying a water bucket. He took me with him to Uncle Garland's house to help with butchering the hogs. We went to pick cherries together, and once we met Uncle Huiet at Poor Man's Mountain and picked a couple of gallons of huckleberries.

Later in life it occurred to me that there might be something more to his taking me along with him on these occasions besides getting me to practice working, or even to relieve Mom of the responsibility of looking out for me. I thought it might have been a way of cementing a kind of father-son relationship, or bond, that otherwise would not materialize, because of our lack of mutual interests and my own determination to keep a distance between myself and adults. It wasn't only when chores were to be done that he wanted me to accompany him, but on almost every little trip that he would otherwise have been alone - a Saturday morning shopping foray to the open air market in downtown Roanoke, or a short ride to an automobile establishment to get an estimate on some repair work. On these little trips he only spoke of the job at hand, or of the weather, which always seemed to be on his mind. It wasn't his style to talk of personal matters.

When I was about twelve years old he actually bought a second baseball glove, and I practiced throwing curve balls to him in the back yard. It wasn't my idea, and I'm not sure that it was his. I suspect that it was my mother's. In any case, the ball throwing ended after a few days, because I wasn't very good at baseball, and I felt guilty about involving him in my activities after a hard day's work.

He maintained his habit of taking me along on errands even as I grew into adulthood, and it eventually led to an amusing, but mutually enlightening, episode at his foreman's house. The foreman was of Italian extraction, with the unlikely name of Botts. He had been off from work for a week (because of some minor surgery, if I remember correctly), and the task of keeping the time sheets had fallen to my father. On Saturday afternoon, he wanted me to go with him to deliver the records to Mr. Botts. At the time I was twenty years old, in my third year at college, and had plenty of more interesting things to do. But I didn't have a good excuse not to go, I so hopped in the car, expecting it to be a brief trip. When we arrived, Mr. Botts was obviously in a sociable mood. He insisted that we come in, seated us in his comfortable living room, and disappeared into the kitchen, remarking that he would get us something to drink. Pop declined, explaining that we didn't have time to stay; but apparently that was not a satisfactory answer, because our host returned with a tray bearing three glasses of beer. My father was sitting on the sofa, Mr. Botts on a chair near the sofa, and I was in a large chair on the opposite side of the room, facing them. They chatted away about Botts's health and about the general situation at the silk mill, while I struggled with my glass of beer. The first gulp went down fairly well, but after that I was reduced to sipping at it; and the more I sipped, the worse it tasted. When I began to feel a touch of nausea, I gave up the struggle and set the still half-full glass on the lamp table beside my chair. My father, on the other hand, drank his like a pro.

Later, as we were driving home, he laughed about the beer, and remarked that Botts was from Italy, and that people from Europe usually served beer or wine instead of coffee or soda pop. I apologized for not drinking all of my glass; but then he changed the subject, and that's all I heard about it for several days. Then my mother brought it up, and told me that my father was surprised that, after three years of college, I had not acquired a taste for beer. I replied that I just didn't like the taste, but what I was thinking was that I was surprised that he had drunk his, because we had never had any alcoholic drink in the house, and I had never detected the faintest trace of alcohol on his breath.

That episode was typical of our relationship. We never spoke directly to each other of our opinions or feelings about anything personal. These thoughts, when they were expressed, were conveyed through Mom.

Nevertheless, at that late date in our life at home, the bond that he had apparently sought was forming - solidly and irrevocably. Unfortunately, it formed at the price of heartache and mental suffering. Unlike most of the adolescents I have known, I didn't go through a period of rebellion against my parents. How could I rebel against parents that had led exemplary lives and had sacrificed extensively for me? Still, I found plenty of ways to create all kinds of problems and anxieties for them. None of it was intentional but, despite my outstanding academic performance, I simply didn't have the mature judgment that it takes to operate an automobile properly, or to steer my own life.

It wasn't just a matter of putting dents in the car or stripping the brakes. It involved more serious problems caused by my outspokeness and my generally uninhibited approach to life. On several occasions I actually feared that he might decide to wash his hands of me, throw me out, and lock the door. But he didn't. He didn't yell at me or even preach to me. He quietly stood by me through it all - and the results were more effective than if we had had a knock-down drag-out fight. That was when I realized the kind of stuff he was made of; and at last we established a true relationship. Without saying a word, we settled on a kind of gentlemen's agreement, whereby I would always try to do better in the future, and he would continue to forgive me. And I usually didn't make the same mistakes twice. I just kept creating new problems - some of them so profound that their effects lasted for months and even years.

His only vice, if you could call it that, was a nervous energy that led to an obsession with work and with being on time - not just on time, but well ahead of schedule - for every appointment, meeting or church service. I think he was the most impatient person I have ever known. Mom would have liked to go to an occasional movie, but I honestly believe that it would have been nearly impossible for him to sit still for two hours. He suffered when the church service ran a few minutes over an hour.

In order to ensure that we would always be not just on time but well ahead of time, he set the clocks ahead a few minutes. Of course, we all caught on to the ruse quickly and adjusted our activities accordingly. He then set the clocks even further ahead; and this game continued until the clocks were set at various times within about five minutes of twenty minutes in advance of the actual time. At this point, he seemed to realize the futility of the effort, and gave it up. But he never returned the clocks to the right time.

His life-long dream was to have a small farm. He wanted a place near town that he could work in the evenings and on weekends, while maintaining his job at the silk mill. He exemplified the saying, "You can take the man out of the farm, but you can't take the farm out of the man." That was at least part of the reason for those Sunday afternoon drives through the country. He was looking for a prospective home site. Once he went so far as to buy a piece of property, on which he kept a sizeable vegetable garden, but for some reason decided not to build a home there, and eventually sold it. Much later in life, after he had retired, a home near the old Barger farm became vacant, and he set his heart on it. But fate thwarted this prospect, too, and he had to content himself with working a garden in the vacant lot behind his house.

The Sunday afternoon drives were usually the ultimate in boredom for Betty and me, but sometimes there would be compensations - like a stop at Clover Creamery or Roanoke Dairy for a cone of ice cream. Clover Creamery served a large dip cone for a nickel, but Roanoke Dairy sold a huge scoop of ice cream precariously balanced on top of a cone, for the same price. The ice cream business boomed at Roanoke Dairy when they came up with a popular flavor, orange-pineapple, that became a longtime fad.

On some Sundays we would drive to the airport to watch the Ford tri-motor passenger plane land with a roar and a cloud of dust, and then generate the same orgy of sound and dirt fifteen minutes later on takeoff. I am convinced that it was the noisiest propeller airplane that has ever been built.

Occasionally, just when one of these long drives became so boring that we were on the verge of snoozing, the car would emit a loud bang - and Pop would grin mischievously. It was his way of adding a little excitement to the trip. He accomplished this trick by surreptitiously slipping the gears into neutral just as we started down a long hill, then shifting back into high at the bottom of the hill and hitting the accelerator. This maneuver caused the car to backfire - and scared the wits out of us on more than one occasion.

Sometimes when we were driving along an empty city street, it would suddenly feel almost as if the car were gliding along the street. Pop had discovered that the lateral wheel spacing on the car was the same as the streetcar tracks, and sometimes would drive down the middle of the street along the tracks. He was so often serious that when he slipped into a playful mood like that, or when he would play his banjo and sing nonsense songs, it was almost as if he took on a different personality.

He didn't do much that one would call recreation. He listened to a couple of favorite weekly radio programs, and he went fishing with some of his brothers about once a year. Usually the fishing was confined to one evening along a mosquito-infested riverbank; but they also made a couple of forays to the bay or the beach to try their hands at salt-water fishing.

Then there were the times when our whole family went on a vacation to the beach. The first of these trips that I can remember took place when I was only about four years old. We were still living at the boarding house, and Sylvia, one of the boarders, went with us. Since Pop's job didn't allow for any vacation time, everything had to be planned well in advance to make the most of the weekend. Mom would have everything packed and a picnic meal prepared so that we could leave immediately after Pop got off from work on Friday afternoon.

We would be on the road by four o'clock, rolling down Route 460 toward Lynchburg. Once we were past that bottleneck, Mom would bring out the food, and we would eat in the car, with Mom handing Pop sandwiches alternately with a cup of iced tea, so that he didn't lose any driving time. Although the roads were winding and two-laned, they were not heavily traveled and traffic was not usually a problem. But sometimes it could become nightmarish, when Pop would get behind a slow driver on a section of road with no reasonable opportunity to pass.

After it grew dark, there was no visible scenery to distract us, and nothing to break the monotony, but the occasional diffuse glow of light that signaled the approach of another car beyond a bend or a hill in the road ahead. When the car would finally swing into sight, the driver would switch his lights to low beam, and Pop would reciprocate. Then, when the car whizzed by, Pop would turn the high beams on again. My eyelids grew heavy watching this ritual being played out over and over again, but I couldn't quite fall asleep because of the excitement of the occasion. Eventually I must have dozed off, however, because all of a sudden we were barreling down Route 460 out of Petersburg on a blessedly straight, four-lane section of highway.

We stopped at Suffolk for the night. In those days the word "motel" wasn't even in the vocabulary, but its early equivalent existed in the form of “cabins” - separate units with a central office. As it happened these particular cabins had not only an office but also a kind of roadhouse restaurant and a wooden warehouse looking building that was being used as a dance hall; and a square dance was in full sway as we piled out of the car. Large double doors at either end of the building allowed the evening air to move through the room, and permitted us a clear view of the dancers and their often intricate dance patterns. This activity fascinated Sylvia and my parents, but I was happy to sit near our cabin and play in the dirt; which wasn't really dirt at all, as I knew it, but more like a brown sand.

That night we went to bed much later than was our custom, but we rose early the next morning and quickly completed the remaining short leg of our journey - from Suffolk to Norfolk - a drive that was notable in that the scenery lacked any sign of mountains, or even hills, for that matter. Before we actually saw the ocean water, I was aware of its proximity by the change in the air. I had a keen sense of smell and could sense the salty, slightly fishy element in the atmosphere. Then when we finally turned on to Shore Drive, I was overwhelmed by the immense expanse of the water, with the long waves rolling in majestically and inexorably, and breaking into foam on the white sand of the beach.

The first order of business was to rent a cottage for our overnight stay. It seems almost incredible to relate that we could have our choice of several cottages without any advance reservation; but those were still depression years, and bargains were to be had everywhere.

Then we changed into our swimsuits and headed for the beach. Pop was the only one who did much swimming. He swam with a sidestroke, lying with his left side immersed and his right shoulder jutting out of the water, and moving along in increments, as he stroked with his submerged left arm. The rest of us spent a lot of time on the beach. My favorite game was to sit near the water's edge and wait for an especially big wave to wash up over me, lift me up and float me down into the water - whereupon I would jump up and wade back to the beach to repeat the game. When I tired of this activity, I built sandcastles, using my new sand bucket and shovel, which had been purchased just for this occasion.

We couldn't afford to eat at restaurants, but the cottage had kitchen facilities, so Mom obligingly made sandwiches and did a little cooking. Incidentally, I was struck by the prevalence of Chinese restaurants in the Norfolk area. I imagined that the reason for this was that many of the sailors that came into port there had sailed to the Orient and had thereby acquired a fondness for Chinese cuisine.

Sleeping at night with no air conditioning was not as difficult as one might think. With the windows wide open, the sea breeze passed right through the small cottage, while the rhythmic splashing of the waves on the beach was more effective in inducing sleep than a lullaby.

Pop was not the kind of person that would be content to lie on the beach for any length of time. He enjoyed swimming, but he wanted to take advantage of the trip to see and do as many things as possible. Accordingly, on Sunday morning we drove from Ocean View to Virginia Beach, where the waves were even bigger and the ocean even bluer. The sky was cloudless, and I marveled that the sunset colors - yellow, rose, and lavender - extended well above the horizon throughout the day. I don't know whether this effect resulted from the high humidity of the ocean air, or from the fact that I could actually see the true horizon - an experience I had never had in Roanoke, which is encircled by mountains.

We drove back to the cottage for lunch, then checked out and started homeward - but not the way we had come. We headed out Shore Drive to Willoughby Spit, where we took the ferry to Newport News. Just driving the car onto the boat was a slightly frightening experience; but once we were parked on board we exited the car and walked to the side rail near the aft end. Here we could take in the fullness of the maritime atmosphere: the ships, trawlers, and sailboats on Hampton Roads, the gulls circling above and dipping surprisingly close to the boat, while the crew finished loading the cars, then secured the gate, and the captain started the engines. Suddenly I noticed that the guide posts in the harbor alongside the ferry seemed to be moving. Then I looked toward the aft and saw that we had actually departed the dock, but with a movement so smooth and gradual that I had failed to detect the acceleration, and had thought that we were still stationary while the dock posts were in motion. Still, those few seconds of unreality in which something that is impossible actually seemed to be happening was an experience that I would recall later in life at those rare strange moments when similar experiences occurred.

We arrived at home late on Sunday evening, after Betty and I did our share of squirming, and Pop fretted over the traffic. After the exhausting trip, he faced a full week of physically demanding work; but he nevertheless seemed to enjoy those trips and looked forward to them as much as we did.

As for me, I was out the next day, both independent and dependent as a pet cat - running all over the neighborhood and then coming home to be fed and to sleep. It would take years of dealing with hundreds of people in my academic, professional, and personal life, before I sat down, sorted through the personalities, and fully realized that I had a family to be proud of in every way.