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- Introduction – Who Knew
- 1957 – Born
- 1963 – The End of Schnickelfritz
- Sunday Morning Shenanigans
We were on our way to the apple orchard in northern Rhode Island in the fall of 1960. It was a beautiful Sunday with the smell of Autumn drifting in and out of our 1959 station wagon as we drove down scenic Route 6. I wasn’t quite tall enough yet to see completely out the car windows from the back seat, but was as happy and giggly as always and seemed content to just watch the tops of the trees go by. We took a left at a cow pasture and rambled down the dirt road toward the apple orchard. The wind shifted. The new aroma arrived, and I proclaimed loudly and confidently “I SMELL ELEPHANTS”.
At York's apparently having to pee.
My mother and sister had a very good laugh and even Carl let out an authentic, uncharacteristically hearty guffaw, so they say. My brother, not surprisingly, had no reaction at all. He wasn’t listening – a character defect which would be brought to his attention many times throughout his life especially during his first divorce. Mom would finish the retelling by explaining that we had spent our summer vacation that year in Maine and I had seen and smelled my first elephant at York’s Wild Animal Kingdom.
In adulthood I would often be tempted at the end of the retelling to adapt Gertrude Stein’s famous line – “A rose is a rose is a rose” and change it to – “A shit is a shit is a shit”, but we weren’t allowed to say shit in my parent’s house. We still aren’t.
And for a very long time the runner up retelling was the Santa Clause incident, but the details of the story would become fewer and fewer as the length of time I remained unmarried lengthened until it became merely an aside.
“I WANT A MOTORCYCLE”, I demurely asked Santa at the local toy store on my fifth Christmas. There I was, my mother would say, dressed in my red plaid skirt with matching red sweater and black patent leather shoes looking so feminine……
I never had the heart, nor the courage, to tell anyone in my family I purchased my first motorcycle at the age of twenty-five, and they never seemed to notice me staring intently at my turkey stuffing whenever the retelling of my fifth Christmas began.
If there was a complaint mentioned about me during the Schnickelfritz years, it was my weak bladder. I was prone to wetting myself, and according to the women in my family (it was only discussed after the males in the family had relocated to the finished basement) it occurred mostly when wearing a skirt and always when I was not at home.
My family had no other reason to believe that I wasn’t just a normal, happy Roman Catholic child and to this day, they cannot explain the changes which took place during my sixth year. They can say the changes started to appear on Sunday mornings.
1963 – John F. Kennedy was assasinated in Dallas, Texas
so….part 3 of 3….no more good stuff????
although thinking back i asked for a doll w green hair for xmas bc i wanted to test santa.. after all it was my bd too and i was told i had special powers.. hmmmm..
love this.. i only wish i could tell a story the way you do.. only my childhood was less than perfect..although i lived in my own world of fantasy i could never escape the realities of a sad and lonely homelife…