Kids who melt lead
Whatever
happened was quickly forgotten. But it triggered a new memory that hung around
for a lifetime. It sent a four-year-old boy into loud and tearful rage as he
curled up in his bed. His father bent over him and the boy sniffled the words, “I
wish I was dead.”
The
young father yanked a blanket across the child’s face, blocking his nostrils
and mouth and giving him a moment of breathless terror. “That’s what it feels
like to die,” said the father.
It
was a teaching moment for the dad, who never gave it another thought. It was
different for the boy, and I never forgot it. My dad loved me, never handed out
slaps or spankings or any kind of physical punishment again. What I remember a
lifetime later is not the slaps I didn’t get, but 60 seconds of tough love gone
haywire.
My
dad and mom had lost two children in infancy, and then an incurable disease
took my adopted brother when he was five and I was three. Three children were
dead, and then my dad heard his one surviving child wish he were dead.
The
Great Depression was getting started. My dad had been a popular pipe organist
in Jamestown, N.Y., movie houses during the silent film era. When sound
pictures were invented he had to find other projects. Installing a theater
sound system had taken us 104 miles from Jamestown to Coudersport. I remember
deferring a few meals.
My
mom was around 20 years old, having been married on her 15th birthday.
Life
was pretty good, most of the time. When I was four I entered Rose Crane’s kindergarten,
developing a quick crush on an older woman, age six. What I wanted most in
kindergarten was to learn how to read, so I could understand what was printed
in the little balloons in comic strips. My grandpa, once a farmer and then a
streetcar motorman back in Jamestown, read the daily newspaper from the front
page weather report to the last obit and classified ad. I knew that he knew
things I would know if I could read.
Those
Depression years were tough for neighbors who used to ask my grandpa whether
they could pick dandelion leaves from his lawn for food, and my classmates who
were seldom warm in the winter, and a woman distraught when she was caught
taking a few dollars from church to buy shoes for her kids.
I
think I had just turned seven when I moved in with my grandparents, then in
their 70s, in Celoron, a suburb of Jamestown. It became famous for one of its
700 residents, Lucille Ball. My mom went
to work as a live-in housekeeper in Jamestown and my dad sold Hammond organs in
Buffalo, 60 miles away.
Parental
love sometimes took form in games and toys, many of them great fun, but mightily
scowled upon today. There was a toy wood burner, shaped like a soldering iron. A
kid lucky enough to have one just plugged it in until the tip became hot enough
to burn wood. Then the kid could burn pictures into sheets of wood. After I
plugged in my lead soldier toy, a little pot of lead was heated until the lead
melted. Then I poured the molten lead into tiny molds to make soldiers. The
chemistry set offered truly special possibilities.
Dwight
Eisenhower once said that when he was a child his family was poor, but didn’t
know it. I didn’t know it. The reason I’m thinking about this today is that my
90th birthday is, like one of those silent movies, a coming attraction. My
children and grandchildren and friends provide nifty energy that makes life
good, and they remind me of unacknowledged and usually unknown boosts from my
parents, George and Doris. My mom lived with my wife and me when she turned 90,
so I know that the heart grows fonder even if it’s growing fainter.
When
I was a kid attending Saturday matinees at the Palace Theatre there was often
an amateur show onstage, and it seemed to me there usually was at least one female
contestant singing, “Ah, sweet mystery of life…” I knew that life was
mysterious even before that. It is still a mystery, and still sweet.
